


The School Tour (And other stories)

by CharlotteML



Series: Takaaki adopts the captives [1]
Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Dangan Ronpa: Another Episode, Dangan Ronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Present Tense, Sad with a Happy Ending, Suicidal Thoughts, Takaaki's not a jerk in this one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-24
Updated: 2017-11-19
Packaged: 2019-01-04 23:26:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 22,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12178554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CharlotteML/pseuds/CharlotteML
Summary: There were many things Kiyotaka had wanted Takaaki to be able to do... See Hope's Peak, go fishing together, celebrate at nice restaurants, watch Kiyotaka's term as Prime Minister with pride...But then The Tragedy happened, and now none of those things are possible TO do anymore... Not until Future Foundation manages to get Hope's Peak's air purifier up and running again, and offer to let him, and the other 'Captives' whose friends and family lost their lives in the killing game, visit the school and pay their last respects...*Now contains other short stories set after the main story!*





	1. The School Tour

_Dear Father,_

_I hope this letter finds you well! I myself have made it to Hope’s Peak perfectly safely!_

_I must say, the school is amazing! I see why they say it’s graduates are set for life! Not that I’m going to take that for granted, of course! I’m **not** going to squander this opportunity like Grandfather did!_

_But… it really is an amazing place, Father! It would have been wonderful if you could have seen it… Even the front gates manage to be impressive, somehow! It’s odd… they’re just bricks and iron, but here in person they seem to give off this, I don’t quite know how to describe it, it’s like an AIR of ~~grandeur~~ **possibility!**_

****

_Hah!_ The gates Takaaki’s looking at now certainly aren’t giving off an air of grandeur _or_ possibility! The bricks are crumbling, the iron’s twisted and the air’s think with pollution… Hope’s Peak hasn’t been an _opportunity_ for almost two years…

Nowhere has, not since the Tragedy. Not since the day he’d been about to leave the station and a man he’d _thought_ was the super intendant had called him over and drugged him, leaving him to wake up in a strange apartment with nothing but his uniform… and his _gun…_

Ah… the _gun_ … He’d spent eighteen mind-numbing months trapped in that apartment with it… Eighteen months with nothing to do but eat the same three meals pushed through the tiny slot in the door every day while wondering why he’d been put in there, what was happening out in the world, if anyone had tried to find him… and if he could stand to spend another day alone with his thoughts and questions, or if he should _use the gun…_

But then he’d wonder about his _son…_ Was he alright? Was he doing well in school? Was he looking for him? Had he almost found him? Would he be disappointed to find his _corpse,_ holding his own gun to his _head_ …

He couldn’t have done _that_ to Kiyotaka… not after all the pressure the boy had taken on from such a young age… always studying and working hard to improve himself, to show everyone that he could surpass the shame of their family and restore the honour his grandfather had stupidly squandered… and even with all that work he took it upon himself to do, he’d still always had the time and energy to talk to Takaaki with a smile and nod in commiseration when he’d complained about problems at work.

Takaaki had probably done a bit too much complaining, in retrospect, especially since Kiyotaka only rarely complained about _his_ problems at school… instead he was always talking about his plans for the future, nice things they’d get to do if he succeeded in his goal and they didn’t have to worry so much about money. He’d wanted Takaaki to go camping and fishing with him and whatever family he ended up with, to make up for neither of them ever having the time before. He’d wanted them both to be able to go out for nice food in restaurants when he had a victory to celebrate. He’d wanted Takaaki to watch with pride as he was inaugurated as Prime Minister, and proceeded to make the country better for everyone…

But none of that would happen now. Kiyotaka isn’t here to do any of it _with_ him. And even if he _had_ been, there’s nowhere safe to camp and fish that isn’t being carefully regulated by Future Foundation, most restaurants are barely functioning as cafeterias and the position of Prime Minister is completely defunct… There is only one thing Kiyotaka had _wanted_ him to do that is even still possible _to_ do…

And that’s why Takaaki takes a moment to steel himself, then walks through the crumbled gates of the last place his son called home… Because Kiyotaka had wanted _him_ to see it to… To see the place that he’d written about excitedly almost every day for a year. So when Future Foundation had managed to get the air purifier up and running, and had offered him and some of the other ‘captives’ a chance to say goodbye to their departed loved ones, how could he possibly have refused?

_…Going in was… **odd!** I was worried at first, because they knew who I was even before I showed my ID… But once I proved who I was, they just smiled and said they were glad I’d arrived safely! No mention of Grandfather at all! They just let me through to the entranceway! And what an entryway! Marble flooring and pillars holding up the arched ceiling… very spacious just for students to enter the school and check the notice board! But at least the sunlight coming through the windows will make the noticeboard easier to read…_

Takaaki’s first experience entering Hope’s Peak is very different from his son’s. There’s no sunlight around here, and even if there was, it wouldn’t get through the thick metal plates bolted to the windows. And while he’s recognised by the Foundation guards manning the front door, there’s no smiles or requests for ID, just a solemn bow and respectful gesture to go through…

“How do you know I’m not an imposter?” Takaaki demands. He can easily imagine this place being targeted by some despair-crazed lunatic, desperate to finish… _her_ plan to destroy all it stood for.

“That guy’s been caught!” One of them announces cheerfully… Takaaki assumes he’s talking about that… _remnant_ or whatever they were called who is the Ultimate Imposter, but…

“That doesn’t mean there’s no one _else_ who can put on a disguise! You should be being more diligent!” Takaaki tells him before heading into the hall to look at... at where a noticeboard _might_ have been, if this room hadn’t been completely revamped by that woman…

“Yeesh, you can see where his kid got it from…” One of the guard thinks he’s whispering.

“Really? He was the last one to get here… and I heard he didn’t even _cry_ when he found out what happened to his kid…”

…That’s true. He didn’t. He still hasn’t. Perhaps because he’d already known it, deep inside himself. Even if the fact that he’d been missing for eighteen months and no one had come to help hadn't convinced him Kiyotaka was no longer _able_ to help, then it would have become clear once the wall to that apartment broke and he just about saw that the sky was black with pollution before he’d been caught by robot bears and forced to participate as a target in some insane ‘demon hunt’ by a group of lunatic children who’d dropped him out of the sky just as he’d been about to panic and shoot them.  He couldn’t imagine Kiyotaka letting that happen… so after that Hagakure woman had him brought to a secret hideout and told him Kiyotaka had been trapped in Hope’s Peak and murdered…

Well… he’d felt numb, of course, but there was a distance to the shock and sadness. He’d gradually seen less and less of Kiyotaka ever since he’d started at Hope’s Peak. Takaaki gone from talking to the boy every day, to reading letters from him every day, to wondering what had happened to him every day… what was one more step from there to remembering him fondly every day? He’d spent that first year imagining Kiyotaka happily striding around this school while he read those letters, and now here he is, imagining Kiyotaka happily striding around the school while he remembers those letters… There’s no difference.

Except that Takaaki’s not sure where he should be going. The entranceway leads out into a T-junction, and he has no idea which way anything is in this empty and somewhat foreboding place…

Empty, that is, except for one other person. A thin, young looking, blond and spiky-haired boy is striding down the corridor on his left towards him, carrying a pickaxe over his shoulder and a grim look on his face…

He looks so angry that Takaaki’s first thought is to wonder if the pickaxe is meant to deal with _him._ But much to his relief, the boy barely gives him a second glance as he passes him and heads down the corridor to his right…

Which is the point at which it occurs to Takaaki that he _could_ have possibly asked the boy for directions… Or perhaps he could just follow him and see where he’s going? There must be _something_ relevant over there, where ever it is…

His quick strides are barely enough for him to catch the boy up, but Takaaki still doesn’t run… he wouldn’t want to get given detention from his own son anymore than Kiyotaka would want to get arrested by _him,_ after all! He’s lucky the boy he’s following had to wait for a lift, or Takaaki wouldn’t have managed to slip through the doors just before they shut and the lift starts moving…

…The boy _still_ doesn’t pay Takaaki any heed. Instead he’s just swinging his pickaxe experimentally, forcing Takaaki to move off to the side to avoid the risk of getting hit. What on Earth could he need that thing for? And thinking of which, where are they even _going?_ This lift has been moving for too long to have traveled less than five floors… so that means they’re going _down?_ But… what is there _below_ Hope’s Peak…?

Oh… oh no… the answer occurs to him, and his legs turn weak at the thought just as the elevator finally stops and the door opens to reveal a ring of wooden podiums, with signs next to most of them…

This is the courtroom… where those cruel class trials and executions happened… They showed him a video of it… the first one at least… the one that ended with the boy Kiyotaka used to nag to do his homework being chained to a pole and bludgeoned to death with a thousand baseballs…

“Two hundred and twenty _four…!_ Two hundred and twenty _five…!_ Two hundred and twenty _six…!”_ Takaaki’s recollection of that horrible, sickening scene is thankfully broken by the sound of a girl counting angrily _,_ the numbers punctuated by the sound of metallic clangs… He turns to look, only to be reminded once again of the baseball player’s demise by the sight of a girl who would likely be quite pretty, if her makeup wasn’t currently smudged and she wasn’t scowling furiously as she throws baseball after baseball back at the machine that had shot them during the execution…

Takaaki looks away… he doesn’t need to see _that!_ But instead, he’s now looking at all the other contraptions in this room… a wired sphere with giant tigers in front of it, a firetruck, a construction digger, a fake classroom… had those all been for executions? A different execution for each child… so which one was _Oowada’s…_

No... he doesn’t need to know that! Takaaki barely waits for the boy to get off the lift before he’s pounding the button to get it to go back up… after all, those trials and executions aren’t part of Hope’s Peak! Kiyotaka wouldn’t want him to see _that_ …

 

_[*click*_

_“I don’t need to see this…”_

_“Ah… Ishimaru? But… don’t you want to see what happened to…”_

_“I already know! He won’t speak again after Oowada’s executed, will he?”_

_“Well… He… he DID speak again… but… he was acting like Mondo…”_

_“…I see. Thank you… But I don’t need to watch that, thank you…”]_

That’s right… he doesn’t need to be reminded of his son’s grief-stricken screams… Kiyotaka wanted him to see the wonderful school he’d been accepted into! The one he talked about in all his letters. So once the lift is back up, Takaaki turns back towards the school entrance. Obviously hei should have turned _left_ back there, so he’ll head that way now! And he can almost imagine how nice it must have been to walk around here when the windows weren’t blocked…

_…The hallways are all very spacious, and with the reduced class sizes here, it’s a lot easier to walk around, although of course people have to try and take advantage of it by **running** through them, even though they know full well that often leads to accidents! But there’s always people who take advantage, aren’t there? Take the bottom floor of the school, for example! There’s a AV room for watching educational DVDs, but every time I go in there, someone watching some frivolous action or romance movie instead! And the nurse’s office is **supposed** to be for emergencies only, but the number of times I see people pretending to be ill in order to skip a class or two! Well, either that or they try to hide in the toilets…_

Once he’s looked inside the impressive AV room, checked the well-stocked nurse’s office and made his way past the toilets Kiyotaka had been complaining about, he’s faced with the stairs to the second floor ahead of him, and a corridor to his right… That must be the entrance to the dormitories, right?

…As it is, the only thing at the end of the hallway is the gym… The gym where that damn ‘Monokuma’ had assembled them all and announced the rules for _her_ ‘game’…

The gaudy red carpet is still spread over the gymnasium floor, but there’s nothing left of the podium or flag up on the stage except for a pile of splintered wood and ripped fabric. Takaaki isn’t usually one to approve of destruction, or mess… but in _this_ case, he can make an exception, even if he doesn’t feel any desire to add to it himself. Mindless damage to pieces of furniture is not going to let him see his son again, and it’s not what Kiyotaka would want him to be doing, either… But thinking of that…

 _…I **really** wish you could see what I’ve done with my room! It_ _was a good room in the first place, but I’ve made a lot of improvements to it…_

Where _are_ the dormitories then, if not here? He’s _sure_ they were all supposed to be on the bottom floor, but hasn’t he checked everywhere now…?

No… wait, there was one corridor that he skipped, opposite that room with the lift...

 

Indeed, that _is_ where Takaaki finds the black sign at the entrance to the dormitories, although it’s currently displaying white text reading ‘Despair Hotel’…

Now _that_ he isn’t going to just leave standing as it is. It’s _wrong,_ and it’s obviously not school property! But the cheap pen he’s brought with him probably isn’t going to be enough to fill in the words, and he’s got no way to repaint the correct ones…

_…The dormitory area is where we can find pretty much everything we could ever need! A kitchen and dining room is right by the entrance, and then opposite that is the laundry room and even a sauna for socialisation! And we each get our **own** room, instead of having to share! Not to mention the storeroom right by the rooms has everything I’ll ever need and more… clothes, more food, stationary, even paint for us to decorate our rooms, although I won’t waste my time with anything as frivolous as **that!**_

Luckily for Takaaki, there’s still black and white paint in there, even if there is one pot less of the black than the rest of the colours, and he’s able to locate some paintbrushes to go with them, so it’s not long before he’s painted over the incorrect text… It _will_ , however, be some time before the paint is dry enough for him to write the correct words in white. Perhaps he should look around the rest of the school while it dries and come back and paint the correct words before he leaves…

He starts with the kitchen, and feels a pang of disappointment as he sees that the plethora of fresh fruit and vegetables that was on display during the killing game is now gone… It’s Kiyotaka’s favourite part of the room. But, of course, who would be bothering to restock the food now that _woman’s_ plan has failed? Hopefully now the air purifier is functioning again, Future Foundation will start to keep the kitchen stocked to his standards once again.

From there, he heads across to the washroom, which then leads to the sauna…

_…Dear Father, You’re probably not going to believe this, but…_

…He really hadn’t believed it at first. _Kiyotaka_ , best friends with the Ultimate Motorcycle Gang Leader!? Just because they’d had a childish competition to see who could sit in a sauna for the longest and had ended up talking to each other for once? Takaaki had though Kiyotaka was playing a joke on him at first, and then he’d worried that Oowada might have been playing one on his son instead… but as time progressed, it soon because clear that there were no jokes being played whatsoever, and it was no surprise to Takaaki when Kiyotaka admitted to thinking of Oowada as more than just a best friend…

Who’d have thought managing to sit in a sauna for over an hour would lead to him falling in love? Takaaki’s sure he wouldn’t last _half_ that long, especially not fully clothed like Oowada did… Although he can’t help but try…

…He doesn’t even last five minutes before he starts to feel ridiculous. What’s he trying to prove, exactly? He’s far too old to be putting himself through this, even if there _was_ a reason for him to do so! He should stop messing around and go see Kiyotaka’s room, like his son wanted him to!

_…I’ve **very** happy with my room! It’s the first one on the left, which means I’m closer to the dining room and classrooms than most of my class! I know it’s not much of an advantage, but all those extra seconds will add up over the year…_

…In lieu of a nameplate on that first room on the left, there’s a small, pixelated picture of his son that Takaaki smiles fondly at for a moment, before the reality sets in that Kiyotaka is _not here_ and that is nothing more than a picture on his door…

A door which has been left unlocked, something that would have irritated Kiyotaka to no end. But Takaaki is glad to have the chance to step inside and see the place his son had spent the happier times of his life inside…

 _Charts._ That’s the first thing that grabs Takaaki’s attention. The walls are all festooned with the types of charts you’d expect to see hanging up in a classroom; important equations, encouraging mottos, common grammar guides… Takaaki suspects that every bit of useful information he’d want to have close at hand when sitting down to do his homework is somewhere on these walls. And if it’s not, then it’s probably somewhere in the collection of think textbooks lining the desk…

Kiyotaka’s amazing… Even trapped in a bizarre and dangerous situation, with no help available whatsoever, it had barely taken a suggestion from Naegi for Kiyotaka to have buckled down and written out all of these charts, mostly from memory, and started working towards figuring out life’s lessons all by himself. Most ordinary students would have used the situation as an excuse to relax, or just cowered in fear in their rooms, but Kiyotaka had done everything he could to encourage his classmates to band together to overcome their situation, even if the situation had just been too much for some of them, regardless of his encouragement…

It’s no wonder people keep telling him that he must be so proud of his son… Kiyotaka must be the best thing the Ishimaru family has ever had to offer to the world, and raising him is the proudest achievement of Takaaki’s life. It’s no wonder Kiyotaka wanted him to be able to see this place… being in this room is making Takaaki feel like the proudest father in existence… if only Kiyotaka was here for Takaaki to tell him so…

But, if Kiyotaka _was_ here, he’d probably barely get any chance to look around the place properly, as eager as Kiyotaka would have been to show it all to him. It’s probably for the best that he’s guiding himself around this tour of the school, as he doesn’t have to worry about racing his son up the stairs to the second floor, and he already knows what Kiyotaka would be telling him about all the rooms here.

 

_…As you go up the stairs to the second floor, there’s a swimming pool on the left. I’ll probably go there quite often, as Asahina has offered to give me swimming tips, and how could I **possibly** turn down the chance to train against the so-called ‘Ultimate Swimmer’! Then between the two class rooms (same set-yp as the first-floor) is an absolutely **wonderful** library, with all **sorts** of books and even some classified information files! Although Togami insisted on pointing out his family has access to all of it already! But the joke will be on **him** once I’m able to crack on and use all these new resources to close the advantage his money gave him…_

They _are_ a nice pool and library. And Kiyotaka had been correct when he said he’d probably end up spending a lot of his time here… but incredibly _in_ correct as to the reason _why_ he’d do so. Not that that’s a bad thing, not at all. Takaaki’s much happier that he learnt to spend time enjoying his classmates company, not just seeing them as yet more obstacles in his life that he had to fight his way past. He only wishes he could have met more of his son’s friends for himself, as Kiyotaka had often suggested in his letters.

But that’s yet another thing that Takaaki can’t do anymore. The only wish of Kiyotaka’s that he can fulfil is the wish for him to see the rest of Hope’s Peak…

_…Up on the third floor is an entire **room** just for recreation! I doubt I’ll spend time **there** … although Naegi is **remarkably** insistent that I at least go in there once and see…_

There’s someone in here already.

He’s so quiet that Takaaki almost doesn’t notice him. It’s only the sheer paleness of him, contrasting with the dark room, that draws Takaaki’s eye to the man sat in meditation on the chair... Everything about him is pale white. He’s wearing a white karetegi, has long white stringy hair and his skin is so pallid it’s as if he’s a ghost… or a corpse.

In fact, he doesn’t look like he’s _breathing_... “Err… Excuse me…?”

To Takaaki’s relief, he opens his eyes and looks at him with the barest amount of surprise. “…Yes?”

“Erm…” The sheer amount of quiet confidence in the man’s weak voice throws Takaaki off for a moment. “…I just wanted to make sure you weren’t dead…” He tries to explain.

“Ah…” A small smile of amusement dances across his face momentarily, “No. I have spent too much of my time fighting death to willingly walk into it’s arms now… Even if that was the path… she felt was best...” He takes in a deep breath and lets it out heavily, “I am just… contemplating what her last thoughts might have been, as she sat here…”

…Takaaki might not have _seen_ the last events at Hope’s Peak, but he’s heard enough to work out that the man in the chair must be talking about the suicide Oogami is being revered for… Even if _he_ seems somewhat… disappointed with her.

“…I see. I’ll leave you in peace then...” Takaaki tells him. Kiyotaka was never particularly fond of this room, even _after_ he’d made more friends and they’d convinced him to relax a little more often…

In fact, there’s not much on this floor he was ever concerned with…

_…I doubt I’ll be going to the third floor at all! Not that it’s not of good quality, it’s just… the rooms there are the Art room and Physics lab! Necessary additions to the school, just not… things I’m likely to have the skill or knowledge to take advantage of quite yet…_

Is it worth even looking at either…?

_…Yamada suggested I come to the art room, and then showed me his current works, as well as explaining some of the other works his fellow artists are working on… I think I’m starting to learn to appreciate art a little more…_

Well, there’s no Yamada to explain the works to him, but Takaaki’s only going to have one opportunity to see what his son was talking about, before Future Foundation start using this building for whatever they have planned and want him out of it…

The Art room looks gaudy, with the mess of multicoloured pictures lining the back wall clashing with the simplicity of the stone statues taking up the front of centre of his view. Everything here seems well made and nice to look at, but not so much so that Takaaki would be willing to pay anything to keep it at home… much the same as he’s always felt with art… Perhaps if Kiyotaka were here to explain it to him, he might understand why his father had been willing to pay such stupid amounts for some of the pieces he collected before his downfall…

There’s another door at the back of the room, so he might as well go see what’s there…

It turns out to be a much simpler room, lined with storage cabinets containing various folders and books and a tool rack holding various sizes of wooden mallets for chiselling, one of which has fallen to the floor. Off to one side of the room is a plump, brown haired girl meticulously flicking through the folders while being watched lazily by the fattest cat Takaaki has ever seen…

The girl is unmistakably a relative of Yamada’s, probably hoping to find any of his work left behind in this room… but then, what’s with the _cat…?_

_…I tell you, Father, I can’t understand some of my classmates at all! I mean, Enoshima asked us all today who the most important person to us was, and Ludenberg named her CAT! And Yamada’s so obsessed with her he kept trying to argue that it’s perfectly reasonable to care more for a cat than one of your fellow humans…_

Ah… that makes sense. Yamada has taken it on herself to look after Ludenberg’s cat, the same way her brother wanted to look after it’s owner…

Well, there’s nothing Takaaki needs to see here… although that mallet on the floor is irritating him. He goes to pick it up and put it back on the rack in the proper place…

 _“HIIISSSSS!”_ As soon as he holds it up, the cat suddenly springs into action and lets out a hellish noise, back arched and fur standing upright so far it’s almost cartoonish…

“Huh? What is it Grand Bois…?” Yamada quickly turns from her work to see what the thing is getting worked up at, and her eyes widen when she sees it’s Takaaki, although she’s not looking at his face, but to the side of it, and she recoils backwards in fear, starting to plead with him… “Ah… N-no! _Please don’t hurt us!”_

“Ergh…” He freezes in confusion at the worst time… Why _would_ he hurt them!?

“I… _please!_ I d-don’t want to die! I just want people to remember the _good_ things he did…!” Who is she talking about…? Why is she _still_ not quite looking at him? Why is she _scared_ of him!? “I… _I’m SORRY!”_

_[“Oh gosh, I’m sorry! I didn’t think you were coming!”_

_“I’m sorry I got held up… But why are **you** apologising?”_

_“Ah… my book…”_

_“Your book? Ah! That’s one’s of Yamada’s isn’t it!?”_

_“Yes… I’m sorry…”_

_“Err… for what!?”_

_“Well… I mean… Didn’t he kill your son?”_

_“…what?”_

_“Well… I mean… **Enoshima** killed ALL of them… but… he was the one who hit your son with the hammer…”_

_“No… no, it **can’t** be! Yamada wasn’t a killer! He wouldn’t have done something like that without any reason!”_

_“You don’t know? Well… it was because Ludenberg told him he’d assaulted her and took pictures… She was the one who came up with the plan…”_

_“…That… that doesn’t sound like her either…”_

_“Did you think Oogami did it then? She was only other person who didn’t survive…”_

_“No! Of course not! I… I didn’t think **ANY** of them did it…”]_

She’s the sister of the boy who allegedly bludgeoned his son to death _with a hammer_ , standing in front of the cat belonging to the woman who supposedly ordered him to do it… and Takaaki is _holding a hammer…_

There’s a thud as it drops to the floor. “I was just going to put back in the right place!” Takaaki explains, hands up in conciliation… “I… It didn’t occur to me that… that it might… I mean, how it would look…” He’s doing a terrible job of explaining this… _“I wouldn’t kill anyone!”_

“Oh… _ha…_ Okay… _haha…”_ She laughs out of nervous relief. “I’m sorry, I just… You’re Ishimaru’s father, aren’t you? I thought… you probably blame Celeste… Or Hifumi…” She looks away guiltily.

“No. Not at all… They were his friends…” He still doesn’t quite believe _they_ did it, but even if they _did_ … “And they were trapped in a strange place with complete strangers encouraged to kill each other… and some of them already _had…_ of course they were getting scared and desperate… _”_

After all, Ludenberg might have _said_ she was doing it for the money, but he couldn’t believe she wasn’t suffering from a growing sense of fear about her situation, regardless of how calm and composed she acted, and how people reacted to _that_ was always unpredictable! After all, he’d always said he’d never want to use his gun, but he’d barely even _thought_ about pulling it out on those _children…_

“You… you think so?” Yamada sniffs in surprise, “I mean… _I_ know he must have been scared, especially of Ishida, but I didn’t think _you’d…”_

“Err… _Ishida?”_ Who was _that?_ Kiyotaka had never mentioned having a classmate with _that_ name, had he…?

“Umm… You don’t know? How your son…? After Oowada…” She doesn’t seem to want to be the one to explain this to him…

But… It’s something to do with Kiyotaka? There _is_ a similarity in the names… Ishi…da…, The start of Ishimaru and… the end of _Oowada…_

_[“He was acting like Mondo…”]_

“Oh… you mean… When Kiyotaka started acting like Oowada, he… mixed their names up?”

“Yes.” She clarifies, looking confused that he had to ask… “Didn’t they show you the video of what happened?”

“Ah… well, they _did,_ but… I stopped watching when Oowada was proclaimed guilty.” Takaaki admits, “I didn’t need to _see_ what happened next…”

“You’re more sensible than me then…” She sighs, “I watched the whole thing and kept expecting Hifumi to break the narrative and turn out to be alive at the end… even when they’d already told me he was dead…”

Break the narrative? As if it was just a story or some sort of TV show? “…That’s understandable. The whole… _‘game’…_ it was just so… unreal!” Everything about this whole Tragedy has been unbelievable...

“I know!” She seems pleased someone agrees with her… “I mean, Hifumi was _killed_ in here, but…” She looks around the room…

It’s clean, tidy, everything’s packed away in an orderly manner, aside from the dropped mallet and the stack of folders she’s looking through… “You’d never know it…” Takaaki summaries.

“Exactly.” She nods, “It’s the same with the Physics rooms…”

There was a murder in the physics room? “Who died there?”

“Umm…” She cringes with a mix of guilt and concern in her eyes…

“Oh... Kiyotaka…” That’s why she doesn’t want to say it…

“Sorry! I…” She starts to tearfully apologise…

“No, it’s fine… I should have been able to figure that out.” After all, he’s seen it’s not any of the first five, Oogami died in the rec room, Yamada’s just told him her brother died in _here_ and Ludenberg would have been _executed_ …

“I still shouldn’t have said it though…” She sighs sadly.

“Well… I shouldn’t have scared you with this…” Takaaki picks up the mallet to emphasise his point, before putting it back in it’s proper place like he’d intended to… an action that causes the cat by her side to glare at him cautiously the entire time he has the mallet in hand. “I’ll leave you to your search now…”

“Okay…” There’s a small amount of resignation in her agreement as she turns back to her folders. Does she not _want_ him to leave, or is she merely feeling that her task is hopeless?

…It’s probably best not to presume she wants his company. And the cat is still glaring at him warily. It continues to do that as he leaves them alone together…

So now the only room remaining on this floor is the Physics room… where his son was apparently killed…

Perhaps it’s a good place for him to pay his final respects?

Unlike the other rooms, there’s a guard outside of this one…

“…Are we not allowed in here?”

“This is the room containing the air purifier, sir, so it’s better not to touch it while we’re all still here!” The guard salutes him… goodness knows _why,_ it’s not as if he’s done anything to deserve it… “But… as it’s _you,_ I’ve been told you can enter on the condition that you go straight to the side room, sir!”

A side room? Presumably that’s where Kiyotaka… _was_. “Understood.”

The guard opens the door and Takaaki quickly makes his was past another guard, standing in front of the giant cylindrical machine humming steadily away in the centre of the room, towards a simple door. He pauses for a moment to prepare himself for whatever he may see once he goes through the door…

…It turns out to be nothing, really. Just a dark green room with various plain looking boxes, so many that they’ve built a shelving unit for them at the back, and some rolls of paper and a pile of blue tarpaulins.

It’s as Yamada told him. There’s no sign whatsoever that his son was killed, no evidence to prove a murder happened at _all_ … He can’t even imagine what it would have looked like if he _had_ been… Kiyotaka lying still in this room, blood pouring from a blunt force to the head… Takaaki’s seen the odd corpse in that state before but… he just can’t imagine Kiyotaka in that state… It just doesn’t seem _real…_

Perhaps it’s just as well. He doesn’t need to be thinking of Kiyotaka in _that_ sort of state. Better to focus on the happy memories they had together… of Kiyotaka’s almost constant source of cheer and energy… Kiyotaka running up to give him a tight hug after time spent apart… Kiyotaka assuring him that things would get better… Kiyotaka’s excitement over everything within the school…

 

_…The fourth floor specialises in subjects I don’t excel at either, namely Music, IT and Chemistry. But I should be visiting it more often than the third floor, because it’s where the staff and Headmaster’s rooms are located… I’m sure student council members have to spend a lot of time discussing things with the teachers, and the headmaster has said we can feel free to discuss any problems we have with him, although I doubt I’ll need to…_

…The headmaster’s office door has been broken open and hangs slightly ajar, but the rest of the office is still in pristine condition, aside from a few files that are scattered on the floor, which Takaaki picks up and shuffles together neatly before looking around the room more closely. Most of the room is taken up by two sofas, each facing a long coffee table in the centre of the room. They’d be identical if it weren’t for a groove which has formed in the one on the right, suggesting it’s sat on more frequently than the other one.

Behind that is a typical office desk setup, somewhat pompously decorated with two flags bearing the Hope’s Peak logo. Both sides of the room are lined with cabinets, the right one chock-full of various books and folders and the left proudly displaying various trophies earned by Hope’s Peak’s former students…

_…I ended up studying less than I intended to this evening! I had some class rep business to discuss with the headmaster, but partway through my report he suddenly insisted on making me a cup of coffee and asking me how I’m finding the school, in copious detail! Then he ended up showing some of the more impressive trophies Hope’s Peak’s students have earned, and telling me stories about how hard they had to work to earn them… I’m wondering if my assuming that all the other students here just geniuses was perhaps a little unfair..._

…Takaaki doesn’t know much about Jin Kirigiri. He’s heard rumours that the man was involved in the experiment that resulted in school’s downfall and tried to cover it up, but he’s also heard accounts saying he was against the project the whole time and only agreed to the cover up to stop the school from falling even faster. He’s heard people say he was a fool for not spotting what _that_ _woman_ was up to, while others insist that she was so cunning that no one could _possibly_ have guessed it…

All Takaaki knows for sure is that the man often took time out of what must have been a busy workload to sit on a sofa and make an effort to get to know his students personally, even _if_ the student in question complained about it eating into his study time, and try to give them useful advice for dealing with life _outside_ of classes, good grades and rules. Whatever part he might have played in all of this, Takaaki will always be glad he was here to convince his son to allocate some of his time into having fun and forming happy memories during his short time before it all happened.

…Next to the headmaster’s office is a staff room, although all that Takaaki takes in is the sight of over a dozen wilted flowerpots before he shuts the door mournfully…

_…The staff here are so helpful! I was starting to think I’d NEVER understand my calculus homework and they were going to throw me out of the staff room for wasting their time, but they all kept at it, even though it took me almost an hour to finally get it…_

It wasn’t just the headmaster who was killed… all of the teachers who’d helped Kiyotaka with his homework, all the security staff who’d kept him safe, the cleaners who vacuumed his room even though he insisted he could do it himself, the porters who assured him _everyone_ locked themselves out of their room on occasion… they’d all been brutally murdered as well. And the perpetrators were the ordinary students next door who had then all committed mass-suicide… And Kiyotaka and the other children had had to live with that knowledge for almost a year…

…How the hell did they _cope?_ How did they not go mad as soon as that happened, let alone think to barricade themselves in here and then manage to live together in confinement for nearly a year? Takaaki’s starting to hate being in this place, with all these reminders of what happened here, and he’s barely been in this school for an _hour!_

…Perhaps they just avoided this floor, in particular. As Kiyotaka said, there’s not much here of note other than the two rooms Takaaki has just looked at, and he doubts they’d have wanted to be anywhere near _them_ if they could avoid it. He’ll just make his way up the stairs to the fifth floor…

 

The fifth floor… the final floor… It’s starts with a small hallway, with two classrooms on the right-hand side and a T-junction up ahead… Kiyotaka never mentioned having classes in room 5-A of 5-B, but while he’s here…

(“I mean, what the _hell_ were you _thinking,_ you stupid bitch!?”)

Takaaki pauses… did he just hear someone shouting…?

(“I mean, I _get_ it! I got trapped to! And it was fucking _terrifying_ wondering what the fuck was going on out there and why no one was coming to help me!”)

He _did!_ It sounds like a girl screaming at someone… he’d best go make sure that it’s not going to turn into anything more serious than _that!_

(“But did you really think you’d be able to keep being a star after you fucking _murdered someone!?_ How the hell did you think that’d work, when they asked you how you got out and what the fuck happened to Kuwata!?”)

It sounds like it’s coming from up ahead… the right hand turn… and then off to the left, the room at the far end of the corridor… yes, that’s it. He can definitely head the voice more clearly now…

“And speaking of which, _Kuwata!? Really!?_ If you’re gonna be dumb enough to try and off someone, don’t pick someone _stronger_ than you, you idiot! Even _I_ could have told you that! Where the fuck was that ‘good intuition’ of yours when it came to picking an easy kill!? Why not go for that tiny computer programmer!? Then at _least_ your dumb plan would have got you to the damn trial!”

The girl’s voice is getting louder, and the air slightly colder, as Takaaki quickly walks towards the room at the far end. The door has been left open, but at this angle he can only see the girl who’s shouting, not who she’s shouting _at…_

“…But then Kirigiri would probably have seen through your plan anyway, or Naegi would have sold you out once he realised _all_ your lives were on the line, so the whole thing would have been pointless and you’d still be _dead…_ ”

…It’s then that Takaaki gets close enough to the door to see what’s going on… To see the entire wall that’s full of small doors, and that girl is yelling at a body on the gurney that’s coming out of the open one…

“Sayaka… _why?_ Why the _fuck_ did you do it!? Why didn’t you just _wait!?_ I know they showed you that video of us… but couldn’t you have just _trusted_ us to look after ourselves and be safe? What did you think _you_ were going to be able to do that the police and everyone else wouldn’t already have done!? How far up your own _ass_ was your _head_ if you thought you’d actually make a _difference_ to what happened to us!?”

This is a morgue… and that body is Sayaka Maizono… His son’s school friend…

 “‘Cause I heard that shit you said to Naegi, you know! All that crap about how you had to chase your dream constantly, and you might get left behind while you were trapped… Did you _seriously_ think we’d have let that happen!? Alright… I know we didn’t always get along, and I said I was gonna steal your spot while you were gone… but that was a fucking _joke!_ Did you _really_ think I was gonna be able to _do_ that!? Did you really think we’d _all_ be willing to just fuck you over after everything you’ve done for us!?”

…And there’s nine doors that are active… nine dead bodies… Nine dead students from Kiyotaka’s class…

“You were part of the _band,_ Sayaka! You were _always_ gonna be part of the band! But now there _is_ no band! Everyone’s _dead_ and I can’t even make a goddamn _double act_ anymore, because _someone_ couldn’t wait more than _three fucking days_ before trying to _stupidly_ murder the most _stupid_ person she could pick in the most _stupid_ way for a _stupid_ reason because, like I said, no one was gonna be your fucking _fan_ anymore after you’d _murdered someone_ you _stupid, stupid BITCH!”_

This is a _morgue_ … _Kiyotaka’s_ in here…

 _“Haah… haa… ha…_ Ah! _Hey!_ W-who are you? How long have you been there!? How much of that did you _hear!?”_

…He can’t answer that… because his train of thought has reached its destination, and is well and truly stuck there. In this moment in time, all that Takaaki knows is…

“…My son’s in a morgue…”

“What? Well, _yeah…_ They _all_ ended up in here! Didn’t you get shown the killing game!? I mean, I only got rescued by Future Foundation two weeks ago and even _I’ve_ seen it already!”

“…I didn’t need to see it…” He didn’t need to know his son was in a morgue… He doesn’t need to imagine his son’s _corpse,_ cold and wrapped up and tagged like so many other corpses he’s seen in the past. He needs to see his _son,_ not just a piece of _evidence…_

“Fair enough, you didn’t miss anything… people have weird ideas of what’s good entertainment, if _that’s_ the thing everyone watched last summer!” This time the girl’s words drag him a little closer to reality, as she shrugs and brushes past him out of the door, “Anyway, I’m done in here. I’ll leave you to see your son. Can you put Sayaka back for me? I had enough trouble getting the door open in the first place…”

“…Alright…” He _should_ be able to shut the door… to put the body of the girl who happily taught his son how to project his voice better back into a cold, dark freezer…

… _GODDAMIT! WHY!?_ Why had this _happened!?_ She was his _friend!_ One of the only few he _had!_ She was a young girl who’d achieved her fame, and wanted nothing more but to be able to work towards making people happy for the rest of her life! And now instead, here she was, lying dead with a knife sticking out of the abdomen in a cold morgue in the school that she’d attended in the hope of making her dream a reality along with eight more of her friends…

…including _Kiyotaka_ …

…He closes the door. And then he looks at all nine of them, the green lights humming almost innocently at him…

Behind one of these door, should be _his son…_ And he should probably take a look at the boy, shouldn’t he? It wouldn’t be right if he left without at least… saying goodbye to the boy, before he goes… But which of these doors is it…?

…He starts at the top left, and has to suppress his urge to gag at the sight of a half-charred body with multiple stab wounds… That must be Ikusaba… how the hell could that bitch do that to her own sister…? From what Kiyotaka has told him, the girl absolutely adored her and would have done _anything_ for her…

…He doesn’t need to see this… And the door underneath hers is the one he just closed, so now he opens the one to the right of it instead…

It’s Kuwata, body bruised and mangled by the mass of baseballs he had shot at him, a cruel punishment, given he’d been thinking he didn’t want to play baseball anymore, even though in reality he’d actually played, and enjoyed, several games with his class since making that decision…

But Takaaki doesn’t need to be thinking about this… He opens the door below Kuwata’s…

It’s Fujisaki, although it doesn’t look like him in that dress. He’d come to peace with his appearance and started wearing  more masculine clothes over the course of his first year, before he came to visit Kiyotaka over the summer holidays… He’d been such an happy, polite boy, even when he’d ended up spending most of the visit helping Takaaki and Kiyotaka with various computer woes…

Now his face is twisted in fear, and there’s congealed blood from his crushed head coating one side of his face… Takaaki _really_ doesn’t need to see this…

Next door, to the _right_ of Kuwata’s…

…is _empty._

Takaaki stares at it. In his shock, he even closes the door and reopens it, in case it’s some sort of trick or he didn’t open it properly. But there’s still no corpse in here. That’s not right, is it? There were nine doors active, and there’s nine students who died… so all these doors should be full…  Unless one of the nine dead students isn’t _actually_ dead…

… _Maybe it’s Kiyotaka._

…It’s so easy to believe it. It makes muck more sense that Kiyotaka isn’t dead. He was a healthy lad, and Yamada was both shorter and weaker than him! He probably survived a hammer blow. Then he would have woken up here and activated the failsafe to get out once _she_ was defeated. If Takaaki opens all these doors, one by one, then he’ll see that Kiyotaka really _isn’t_ in a morgue, but is instead out… _somewhere._

But where, that’s the question? He’s obviously not at Future Foundation, but if he didn’t get out until after he ‘game’ was over, he wouldn’t have known any of what was going on, would he? He probably would have just walked out of the school and started trying to figure out what had happened… and he wouldn’t have settled for just figuring it out, he would have started trying to _fix_ the problem, probably by telling off everyone who was contributing to it, regardless of how minor the damage they were causing was…

But that might be dangerous… surely Kiyotaka had more sense than _that_ … Maybe instead he’s hiding somewhere, and settling for writing detention slips to the rioters instead… And while he’s at it, he’s probably still writing Takaaki daily letters, even if he doesn’t know where to send them, because Takaaki’s not done anything important enough to be noticeable since getting rescued...

Well… if Kiyotaka can’t find _him_ , _he’ll_ just have to find Kiyotaka! It might be a lot of work, but Takaaki won’t rest until he’s found his son! And the first step is to just confirm to himself that his son _is_ definitely out there waiting for him, by opening up the rest of these doors with his friends in them and…

… _Oh_ … no… _There_ he is. Takaaki just needed to open the door underneath the empty one to find him…

_Kiyotaka…_

The baby who never wanted to sleep, the toddler that ran him ragged, the child he corralled into helping with the housework, the kindergartener who threw himself into every book he could find, the school boy who slaved to make sure his fellow students had every opportunity to succeed, the teenager who jumped at the chance to take every opportunity his grandfather was given and make a hundred times more than _he_ had out of them, the young man who laughed and smiled with pure joy as he talked about his friends and all their wonderful goals, the man who was going to make the world _better,_ to make his _life_ better, to fix _everything…_

Is lying in this freezer, face twisted in pain from the wound in his head, _absolutely still…_

No… he wasn’t _still_ … His son was never _still_ … even when he slept he tossed and turned and murmured, as if his brain was busy scolding the rest of him for daring to stop working when he had so much he needed to do, or perhaps he just had so much energy it was physically impossible for him to stay still? That was more like it… his son just had _so much_ _energy,_ too much to keep to himself… it pulsated out of him, infusing itself into everyone around him… Takaaki had probably been living off of that energy for _years…_ The lectures from Kiyotaka that got him out of bed after sleepless nights, those infectious smiles that brightening his mood during the worst of times, the insistences that no matter how bad it got, they could work to make it better… _Kiyotaka_ would always work to make it better, he wouldn’t rest until he was…

…he was…

_…he was dead. He IS dead._

He isn’t hiding somewhere, writing Takaaki a secret letter to let him know he’s safe. He isn’t out lecturing the rioters until they start tidying up the mess they’ve made. He’s not working to make the world better, to fix everything, not anymore…

Because he’s here, _dead,_ his head bashed in by one of those few friends he had, his face twisted in the expression he’d held as he struggled to stay alive, his body covered with the coat belonging to the man he’d loved, his whole form starting to blur as Takaaki’s breathing becomes ragged and his legs shake and tears start to well up in his eyes…

He lets out a sob as he collapses to his knees, arms clutching his son and face buried in his chest, holding him tightly… maybe if he holds him tightly enough he can give back some of that energy he’s been borrowing for all these years… just enough to jump-start the boy back into life…

It’s a stupid, fleeting thought. His tears of grief won’t bring his beloved son back from the dead. It’d be like something from a fairy tale… and neither Takaaki or Kiyotaka were ever one for fairy tales. They were both too grounded in the harsh reality of life…

And in reality, Kiyotaka Ishimaru, his pride and joy, his source of energy, his hope for the future…

Is _dead_. _GONE_. And nothing can ever bring him back. He’s going to spend the rest of time lying in this cold freezer, _dead…_ doing _nothing._ Not until the power eventually gets cut off and he rots away to nothing…

Was that really it? There was absolutely no other possibility? After all that hard work his son had done, he’d have no effect on the world whatsoever? What a _waste…_

 _He’d hate that._ He’d always hated waste… This was a boy who asked to be put on the organ donor list when he was _eight,_ he’d have wanted his corpse to do _something…_ but there were no transplant surgeons anymore, and so many corpses that most of them just got thrown into piles to rot, without so much as a passing glance…

Kiyotaka deserved better than that… he deserved to do _something…_ even if it was just being buried, and helping flowers grow. No, maybe not flowers… _food!_ He’d have thought that was more practical…

Yes… he can do that. He can take his son’s body somewhere, lay it to rest, plant some seeds and then…

And then…

And then he can _use the_ _gun,_ and escape this dark, joyless, _hopeless_ world that he doesn’t have the energy to face anymore. And what little energy he has will seep into the ground and mix with his son’s again…

Yes. That sounds nice. That’s what he needs to do. He just needs to pick up his son, and…

 _“HEY!_ What the fuck are doing!? Leave them alone, asshole!”

Takaaki turns… the boy from the elevator is stood panting angrily in the doorway with the, now _cracked,_ pickaxe in his hand. What is he talking about though?

“Uhh… oh, _shit!_ You’re…” The boy’s anger fades when he sees Takaaki’s face, “Uhh… I’m sorry! I didn’t realise you were… I mean… He’s with yer _son_ , so…”

Why is he speaking as if there’s someone _else_ with Kiyotaka?

_[“Well… He… he DID speak again… but… he was acting like Mondo…”]_

“You… you really think their souls…?”

“What? No, that was bullshit!” The boy seems indignant at the mere suggestion, but then looks guiltily at Kiy… at the _body_. “Uhh… no offence!”

“Then why are talking as if Oowada’s’s… _here!?”_ Takaaki gestures to... _it._

 _“Oh!_ I, uhh… Mondo promised your son he’d always be with him…” He sighs, “So... I put the tub in yer son’s arms.”

“The… _tub?”_ What _tub!?_ He wasn’t aware of Oowada having a _tub_ that was special to him… wouldn’t it have made more sense to give Kiyotaka the pickaxe, if he’d wanted his son to have something belonging to the biker…?

“Wha…!? Y-y’know! The _tub!_ Tha… that fucking _tub!”_ He explanation is rapidly turning into angry snarls, none of which is helping Takaaki understand what he’s talking about... “What, did they not show the fucking _Killing Game!?”_

Oh… this must be about something that happened after Oowada’s trial… “They did… but I stopped watching once Oowada was declared guilty.”

 _“Eh!?_ But… Yer son was still alive then!” The biker cries, “Didn’tcha wanna know what happened ta him!?”

“I could _tell_ what was going to happen… I didn’t _need_ …” No… that wasn’t actually true, was it? He’d spent all this time in limbo, not quite believing the reality of his situation, subconsciously thinking that if he waited long enough Kiyotaka would rush back into his life with a smile on his face and start chivvying him into action again… _That’s_ why he’d stopped the video… “…I didn’t _want_ to see it. I didn’t want to believe he was… _is_ actually dead.”

“ _Haaa_ … Yeah… I… I get _that_ alright…” The boy’s shoulders slump as he lets out a sigh, “I didn’t believe it either… kept telling everyone Mondo musta jumped outta there at some point without ‘em noticing… wasn’t until they showed me a better version and I watched it frame by frame, saw him actually fucking _melt,_ that I…”

 _“MELT!?”_ What…!? What the _fuck_ did she _do_ to him!?

“Uhh… _Yeah_ … They put him on a bike… made it drive inside a cage so fast _he… he_ …” The boy starts to shudder.

“I don’t need to know.” The words shoot out of Takaaki’s mouth, even though he probably _does_ need to know. “I mean… you don’t have to tell me…”

The biker considers it for a moment, then turns back towards the door. “Just… look under the coat. That oughta give you the gist of it…”

A sense of dread rises in Takaaki’s heart as he reaches down to lift the coat currently covering his son. But it’s overruled by a morbid sense of curiosity as well… and a desire to understand just _what_ his son had been forced to watch happen to his one and only love…

Under the coat is… it looks like a cheap tub of margarine, something unremarkable at first glance. It’s not until he makes a closer inspection that he sees the familiar ridiculous hair, gaudy eye make-up and stern expression his son had spent a summer insisting combined into the face of the most handsome man he knew… and _that_ makes it perfectly clear what Kiyotaka saw after that trial, even without the superfluous words printed next to it…

 _Mondo butter… MONDO BUTTER!?_ Like it was a fucking joke brand name or something! How could that _sick bitch DO_ that!? How could she stand to prey on old weaknesses that Oowada had spent over a year overcoming, to pressure him into killing one of his closest friends!? Where did she get off on calling it _justice,_ executing a man she’d all but _forced_ to murder someone! And how could she even _dream_ of doing it in such an _evil, FUCKED UP way!?_ And what had possessed her to do it in front of all his friends, to make them _watch_ his life get… get _melted down_ into nothing but a _goddamn JOKE!?_

Was this what _despair_ did!? It made you think things like that were normal, _acceptable_ even, _fun_ perhaps!? How in hell’s name could anyone fight against _that…?_ He couldn’t even imagine _trying…_ not without _Kiyotaka…_

“Did ya look yet?” The biker asks, quietly.

“Yes.” Takaaki drops the coat back down, he doesn’t need to keep looking at _that…_

“So… what’re gonna do…?”

“I want to give him a proper burial.” Takaaki tells him. No need to go into the details.

“Like… with your family?” The boy asks, “…Could ya take Mondo? Be nice for him ta be with a family…”

“Ah… no… My family couldn’t afford a plot…” Takaaki admits, “But… Oowada has a brother, doesn’t he? Kiyotaka would probably have liked to be with the pair of them!” Yes… he’d have probably liked that more than the food idea, wouldn’t he? Being part of his new family… Part of his boyfriend’s whole _gang_ of _friends…_

“Ya won’t be able ta get there. First thing I did once I got outta Towa was try ta ride there… reckoned that’d be where any of the gang ended up. Thought they mighta been riding around on their bikes still, patrolling the place, keeping it safe from despair…” The biker sighs, shrinking with sadness, “And there were _bikes_ alright… fucking _black and white_ ones that _giggle_ and try ta shoot at ya… I barely had time ta get outta there… no chance of burying anyone… Ha…! Not unless it’s under your _own_ corpse!”

“…Saves me a bullet.” He could even give the _gun_ to someone el…

 _“The FUCK was that!?”_ Ah… did he just mutter that thought out _loud_ …? Presumably he _did,_ because the boy is now staring at him in horror. “You… you’re planning ta _shoot yerself!?”_

“…Yes.” There’s no point in Takaaki denying it, the boy would probably try to stop him regardless, but perhaps he can persuade the lad _not_ to...  “I… I wouldn’t be of any help in this fight… I’m getting old and _tired.._. Better to…”

“Yer, like, _forty-something!”_ The kid snaps, “That butler dude’s _twice_ that and he’s still helping!”

“He’s got someone _to_ help!” Is the first counterargument Takaaki thinks of, _“I_ haven’t got _anyone_ left!”

That leaves the boy speechless for a short while, but then his sets into grim determination… “Alright then.” To Takaaki’s surprise, he nods. “Let’s do it.”

“Err…?” Why did he phrase it as if _he’s_ going to…?

“Let’s go get fucking _killed!”_ The damn fool practically _cheers_ it! _“_ All _five_ of us together, sounds good to m…!”

 _“Don’t be stupid!”_ Takaaki orders him, “You’re just a _kid!_ You’ve got your whole _life…”_

 _“SO!?_ I ain’t got anyone left ta live for either!” He screeches, “The gang’s _gone_ and Mondo’s a tub of fucking _butter!_ Why the fuck should _I_ stick around!?”

But… he’s a _child…_ He must have _someone_ who’s looking after him! “…What about your parents?”

“My…!?” He snorts, before laughing hysterically, _“Ahahahaha…!_ Why’d ya think I joined a _gang,_ you old _dumbass!?_ My parents never gave a _shit_ about me! Ah… ahaha _…haaa_ …” His laughter trails off, leaving nothing but cold despair in his eyes… “I don’t think _anyone_ _ever_ did _…”_

“That _can’t_ be true…”

“No… No, it fucking _is!”_ He insists, “My family didn’t give a shit, the gang ever only listened ta me ‘cause Daiya told ‘em to and then _he_ got himself killed for _Mondo!”_

“But… you wouldn’t have been captured if Oowada hadn’t…”

“All _that_ meant was that I meant _slightly_ more ta him than anyone _else_ in the gang!” He scowls, “It didn’t make _fuck all_ difference once he fell in love with _him!”_ He points at Kiyotaka, “That… that _lucky_ _bastard_ there that had friends that didn’t just wanna suck up ta him and... and _you!_ Having a fucking _father_ who fucking _loved_ him so much yer gonna _off yerself_ just ‘cause _he_ ain’t here anymore! Whereas _my_ old man probably doesn’t even remember I exist, let alone _love me!_ So why the _fuck_ should I…!? _”_

…The boy’s started crying.

_He needs a hug._

… Takaaki strides over and pulls the crying teen into his arms… It’s almost the same as when he used to comfort Kiyotaka, the same odd sense of concern and warmth that he hopes will channel into the boy and cheer his mood, however slightly. The only difference is that the biker doesn’t hug back, whereas Kiyotaka used to grab him so tightly it was hard to breathe. Instead he just falls still, blinking rapidly as his tears subside.

“…What’re you doing?” The boy asks him, after a moment of silence.

“I’m giving you a hug.”

“I know what a fuckin’ _hug_ is! Why the _fuck_ are ya _giving_ me one!?”

“I thought you needed one.” Takaaki admits.

“What!? No! I’m a fucking _gangster!_ I don’t need a damn _hug!”_ He makes a feeble attempt to squirm out of Takaaki’s arms, “’Specially not one from an asshole whose planning ta _off himself_ …”

…He’s got a point. If everyone he’s ever cared about has ended up dying, then it would be rather unfair of Takaaki to do something like keep hugging him until he cares about _him_ as well, and then go get himself killed.

…That thought doesn’t stop him from refusing to let the biker out of his arms, though. The boy needs a hug, regardless of how much he’s protesting right now, and Takaaki can give him a hug…

But it’s more than that. He… he’s _missed_ this. He’s missed knowing there’s always at least _one_ thing he can do to help, even if it’s just the simple act of providing a shoulder to cry on. He’s missed being _needed,_ even if he’s only needed to help someone _else_. He’s missed having a purpose, even if that purpose is to help a child grow and fulfil their _own_ purpose…

He’s missed being a _father…_ And this boy’s never even _had_ one...

“Perhaps I could live for you, instead…” He offers.

“What?” The boy finally pushes himself out of Takaaki’s arms, “Dude! You’re twice my fucking age!”

“Err…!” That… that obviously sounded better in his own head that it did out loud! “I meant I could _look_ _after_ you!” …Wait no, that still sounds creepy… “As a _father!”_

 _“I’m NINETEEN!”_ He shrieks, “I’m too old ta need fuckin’ _looking after!”_

“That’s not true…” Takaaki can’t help but smile sadly at his naivety, “I’m _twice_ your age and I still wish I had my parents to look after me, sometimes…”

 _“…Hah…”_ Takaaki’s not sure if that was a sob, a laugh, or a mixture of both from the biker, “Well… if it stops your dumb ass from killing yerself…”

“…It probably would.” Takaaki admits, selfishly. This is emotional blackmail, isn’t it…? And he’s practically a _child…_

…A child who suddenly launches his face into Takaaki’s chest and wraps his arms around his back before crying so hard the tears wrack his entire body…

Takaaki puts his arms around him… Perhaps it’s less emotional blackmail, and more that they’re just two men desperately looking for something to cling to, now everything _else_ they’d loved has been wrenched away…

After several long minutes, filled with tears and muffled screams of anger, the biker loosens his grip and straightens…

“If you tell anyone I did that I’mma kill you myself, old man…” He mutters, embarrassed.

“Of course…” This would probably be a good time to call the boy by his name if he _knew_ it… “Err…”

“What…?”

“…I just realised I don’t know your name…”

 _“…Bahahaha!_ Oh my fucking _god!”_ He starts laughing at the insanity of all this… “It’s Takemichi Yukimaru.”

“Thank you.” Takaaki extends his hand to Takemichi, “I’m Takaaki Ishimaru.”

 _“Hah!_ Good ta meet ya _, ‘Dad’!”_ Takaaki can’t help but smile at that, even though it’s painfully clear he’s being _sarcastic_.

“Thank you…”

“Course… now this means we’re back to square one…” Takemichi looks down at he remains of Kiyotaka and his boyfriend with a sigh, “Did ya have any other ideas?”

“…I was thinking Kiyotaka would probably like to help food grow…” Although it sounds silly now that Takaaki has to say it out loud…

“Yeah… sound’s right.” Takemichi shrugs, “Maybe up in the school garden? Mondo always liked to nap up there…”

The school _garden…?_

_…This school even has an indoor garden! There’s all sort of plants here that I’ve only ever read about in textbooks, all with notes on them written by the Ultimate Botanist! A perfect learning environment… …The weather outside was poor today, but my classmate Naegi suggested we go for a walk in the gardens, and then he said he wanted to learn about me and listened to me talk the whole time!… …I’m sorry father! I don’t know what to say! Detention for PDA, I’ve never been more ashamed in my life! I don’t know what came over me! I was just having a picnic in the garden with Mondo, and he felt hot and took off his coat…_

“Yes… Kiyotaka liked that place as well.” Takaaki remembers…

The soil in the gardens is easy to dig, but it still takes the pair of them a few hours to dig a hole big enough to hold the boys and some seeds. And then there’s tears and failed attempts from both to say words good enough to truly honour the pair before they fill the hole back up and say their final goodbyes to the dead… Both the humans and the school they’d called home…

“So… I guess we’re joining Future Foundation permanently…” Takemichi decides as they’re reaching the front entrance, “Guess I get to keep that apartment they gave me…”

“It does seem the best chance to… make things better, I guess.” Takaaki agrees… It’s the sort of place Kiyotaka would have nagged everyone he knew into joining.

“What do you think they’ll have us do?”

“Hmm…” Takaaki considers it, he’s not exactly sure what use a policeman would _be,_ exactly… other than being reasonable with a gun, and somewhat calmer than most in hostile situations, what skills does he have, exactly…?

“Future Foundation are ooking for new art… Maybe I’ll be able to help with _that?”_ His thoughts are interrupted by the sound of Yamada’s voice, from outside the main door. “What do _you_ think Grand Bois Cheri?”

“Merroow…”

“Is she talkin’ to a _cat!?”_ Takemichi scoffs quietly.

“Shh!” Takaaki scolds him, “That’s… _Yamada’s_ sister and _Ludenberg’s_ cat...” Hopefully that’s enough for him to understand…

“… _Oh_ …” It seems it is, as Takemichi looks guilty.

“…Do you think they’d believe me if I tell them that he said it wasn’t Hifumi’s fault? Or even Celestia’s?” Yamada continues as they come close enough to see her, sat forlornly halfway between the front door and the gates, with the cat in her lap… “No… I guess they wouldn’t… They’ll just keep saying I’m in denial about what they were really _like_ , won’t they…? That she was a greedy witch and he was just some perverted idiot who deserved what he got…”

 _What!?_ Was _that_ why she’d been so convinced he’d try to _kill_ her!? He can’t let that sort of idiocy stand! Kiyotaka would have been horrified to find out that his friends were being vilified and Yamada’s sister was being bullied in _his_ name!

“Who are these people?” Takaaki strides past the guards and out of the door to ask, “If they won’t believe _you,_ then _I’ll_ tell them!”

“Huh!?”, _“Hiss!”_ Yamada jumps at the sound of his voice, dislodging the cat from her lap, who turns to hiss at him for it.

“I asked who is it who’s been saying those things about your brother?” Takaaki repeats less angrily, “I’ll go talk to them myself.”

“Umm… I appreciate that, but… well… it’s not like it’s one or two people who’ve said things…” Yamada sighs, hugging her knees. “It’s… _lots_ of people… your son _was_ the Ultimate Moral Compass after all… they keep asking me how Hifumi could possibly have believed someone like _that_ would abuse a girl… And they don’t always say it to my face, but I hear them making comments about how they were glad when Celestia killed Hifumi and wouldn’t have _cared_ if Celestia had _only_ murdered him because all he did was draw weird doujins…”

“… _I_ cared.” Takaaki can’t help but voice the first thought to enter his head as he watches the tears well up in her eyes. Hearing the list of names of Kiyotaka’s friends who had been cruelly murdered had been heart-wrenching, even if he’d hardly met any of them…

“…Why? You never really met him, did you?”

“No… But… every time he drew something with a politician in it, he made it look like Kiyotaka.” Takaaki remembers fondly, “And even thought they weren’t always _good_ politicians, the fact that Yamada always thought of _him_ instead of any _actual_ politicians… well… I guess it gave him hope for his future. There’d be times when he’d worry that he wouldn’t actually be able to reach his goal, or couldn’t imagine himself _in_ the role… but seeing it drawn out, even if he knew it was a fake drawing from by one of his friends, made it seem more realistic.”

“Oh…” Yamada is starting to smile through her tears.

“And… well, Mondo never talked about anything he did at that school, specially not all his carpentry shit, so I dunno much about how he got on with your bro…” Takemichi begins trying to cheer her up as well, “But when I was going through his stuff, I found a book on learning to draw people and animals, and how’re they’re shaped and stuff, that had your bro’s name in it. So I guess he was helping Mondo learn to carve that kinda stuff?”

“Probably… He always wanted to encourage people to be able to express their feeling through art, like he always did…” Yamada shuts her eyes and smiles fondly, just for a moment, “I just wish I could make _everyone_ realise he used to do those things for his friends…”

And _there’s_ the problem… It’s not as if Takaaki can follow her around everywhere she goes and talk to anyone who makes a snide comment about her brother. And he doubts its possible for him to make a broadcast along those lines either…

“Well… Me and ‘Dad’ here are gonna stick together from here on out…” Takemichi sounds as if he’s trying to hide his nervousness underneath sarcasm, “D’ya wanna join us…?”

Yamada blinks and turns to face him ponderously. “…Are you… offering to be my new brother?”

“EH!? N… _No!”_ Takemichi’s instinctive shriek sends a wave of disappointment crashing over Yamada’s face, and he guiltily changes his tune straight after... “ _Errrg_ … I mean… I wouldn’t say I could _replace_ your bro or anything… I mean I hardly know ya for a start! But… I guess… if ya wanna _try_ thinking of us as family, I could go with that…”

 _“R…really?”_ Yamada smiles hopefully up at the boy… _and Takaaki._

It appears he’s being included in the offer, or at least that’s how Yamada’s taken it. Meaning if he accepts he’ll have gone from having no son to having a son _and_ a daughter in the course of one day, assuming responsibility for two young adults he barely knows. Thinking of it logically, it sounds completely crazy, but…

“…Of course.”  He can’t deny that there’s a surge of joy as he _does_ accept. He knows he’ll never be able to replace Kiyotaka, but there’s some comfort in the thought of having people to think of as family again, even if the only commonality between the three of them is the tragic situation that brought them together.

“Th…thank you!” Yamada stands quickly and runs towards himself and Takemichi, then wraps her arms around them both and pulls them together into a forced hug, burying her face into their stomachs… “I… I’m sorry… It’s just… I’m not used to being alone… and… it’s nice to have _someone…_ ”

“I understand… It’s alright…” Takaaki tells her as he puts his free arm around her shoulders and pulls her slightly closer, while Takemichi awkwardly pats her arm with a look on his face that implies that he thinks she might explode at the contact.

It would appear he’s not used to female contact, especially not in an affectionate sense, although this makes sense, given what Kiyotaka told him about Oowada, and how he suspected many of the Crazy Diamonds were the same. Hopefully he won’t be too uncomfortable around his new ‘sister’ for too long…

“Umm… I just realised…” Yamada relaxes her grip as she breaks the silence, sounding embarrassed.

“You don’t know our fuckin’ names either, do ya?” Takemichi guesses, voice dripping with exasperation at their situation, “I’m Takemichi Yukimaru, he’s Takaaki Ishimaru…”

“Thank you!” Yamada lets go of them both so she can stand and give a proper introduction, “I’m Fujiko Yamada, and…”

She turns back towards the steps and quickly picks up the cat, who is glaring at Takaaki again… or has been for the entire time, possibly. It certainly looks as if it hates him enough to.

“…This is Grand Bois Cheri Ludenberg!” Fujiko cheerfully carries the cat over to them, a stark contrast between her smile and the look of furious indignation on the cat’s face, “We’re looking forward to being part of your family!”

...Of course. Of _course_ she wants to include the cat. Even if it _does_ look like the meanest, fattest most _difficult_ cat Takaaki’s ever seen, and appears to think just as lowly of him as he does of _it…_

“Hah… yeah!” Takaaki is slightly relieved to hear that Takemichi’s agreement is somewhat forced, “What’s a family without a pet, right…? Haha…”

“Yes! That’s right!” Fujiko doesn’t seem to pick up on his somewhat reluctant tone, “So say ‘hello’ to them, Grand Bois Cheri!”

The cat narrows its eyes, giving them a look that indicates that, if they are lucky, it _may_ be willing to merely _tolerate_ their presence…

“Umm… he takes a little while to warm up to people…” Fujiko excuses the cat, apologetically.

“No kidding…” Takemichi mutters, “Well, I guess now we gotta… What’s all that yelling about…?”

 _Yelling?_ Takaaki hasn’t heard anything… although now the boy mentions it, he can just about hear two voices approaching and raised in annoyance.

“… _pulling!_ There’s no way you’re gonna be alright just wandering around out there without help!” A girl’s voice is the first one Takaaki is capable of understanding, it sounds somewhat like the one who he briefly saw down in the… underneath the school.

“If I’m not capable of looking after myself, why is it you’re failing to stop me?” And _that_ sounds like the young man who was meditating over Oogami’s death…

“Because I just got done throwing a thousand baseballs at that bastard machine! I can barely move my arms!”

“And you accuse me of poor stamina…”

“Don’t gimme that nonsense! I found you _unconscious!”_

“I told you, I was resting…”

“The hell you were! No one rests on a damn _floor_ right outside a room with _chairs_ in it!”

The arguing pair enter the foyer, both looking far different from the last time Takaaki saw them. The girl now looks immaculately pretty, having fixed her make-up and hair bow at some point. The man, however, looks as if he can barely breathe and is swaying wildly as he moves, so how he’s managing to walk at all despite the girl pulling him backwards is a complete mystery to Takaaki, even if she is a full foot shorter than him.

There’s a brief pause as the two of them notice the two guards at the door, and possibly the three of them beyond it. Then the man suddenly twists his arms so fast that Takaaki can’t quite see what he actually does with them, only that the result is the girl being pushed backwards away from him…

 _“Hey!”_ She takes a moment to recover, as the man quickens his pace and heads towards the two guards, “Don’t let him out! He’s _sick!_ He should be in the medical bay!”

A scowl of irritation crosses his face as the two guards and Takaaki all move to block his path _…_

“She’s exaggerating.” He forces himself to speak calmly as he slows to a stop in front of them, “I have a heart condition, but I’m still capable of walking around by myself…”

…He might be _capable_ of it, but it certainly isn’t doing him any good to be doing it right now. Even with his best attempts to look healthy, he’s still having to breath heavily and looks like Takaaki could knock him over with a feather, even if the man is half a foot taller than him…

“Come on, lad. Just because you _can_ do something doesn’t mean you _should.”_ Takaaki sighs, “I’m no doctor but even _I_ can tell you need rest and should probably see a doctor about getting some medication…”

“I _have_ medication.” He scowls at Takaaki’s suggestion, “Unfortunately, it’s not easily made, so I’m having to be sparing with it…”

“Then that’s all the more reason for you to be resting!” The girl who’d been attempting to drag him back to the medical bay cries in exasperation.

 _“You’re_ the one who can barely move…” He retorts.

“Well I’ll be happy to go and lie in the med bay for a while, just as soon as I know you’re not going to go outside and collapse again…”

He still appears to be reluctant to rest…

“Look, lad…”

“My name is Kenshiro.” Takaaki is interrupted immediately.

“Alright, Kenshiro. No one is going to think less of you for needing to rest more than you usually would until you have better access to your medication…” Takaaki starts…

“Y-yeah! I mean, you’re the strongest guy _alive!”_ Takemichi excitedly shouts a fact that Takaaki was unaware of, “No one’s gonna give _you_ crap for _anything!”_

Kenshiro looks slightly mollified, albeit in a bemused way, at the look of reverence that Takemichi is giving him. But it still doesn’t look as if the point has been driven home quite enough…

“We will, however, consider you a goddamn _fool_ if you keep insisting that you’re perfectly fine when you look like you could topple over at any second!” Takaaki says in the sternest voice he can muster, “So stop being stubborn and go _rest!”_

Kenshiro attempts to stare him down for a moment, but it’s nothing compared to the fierce looks Takaaki used to exchanging with both his father and son, and the taller man relents before Takaaki even needs to blink…

“Fine. I’ll be in the nurse’s room…” Kenshiro turns back on himself.

 _“Finally…_ Same here…” The girl who came in with him groans and starts to walk back towards the corridor…

Well, good. Now that’s settled…

“Err… but this isn’t in our orders…” One of the guards sheepishly admits.

“Whaddaya mean it ain’t in your orders?” Takemichi snaps, “What’s it matter if there’s two extra people in the school for a day or two? Didn’t you guys bring any extra rations?”

“It’s not that… we’re all supposed to be leaving once you’ve finished.” The guard explains, “There won’t be anyone here to guard them if there’s any attacks…”

 _“What!?_ But… This is _Hope’s Peak,_ isn’t it!? It’s supposed to be a big deal!” The girl at the back of the room points out, “Won’t this place be a huge target!?

“That’s _why_ they want us out… they think Hope’s Peak is too high profile to keep safe for long! If any more remnants of despair show up, they’d be sure to target it, especially if they knew Future Foundation were occupying it! It’d just eat up too much resources…”

“But… what about the air purifier?” Takaaki can’t believe his ears, what’s going to happen to the _garden_ if everybody just up and leaves!? “Why did you bother setting it going again if no one’s going to be here to need it!?”

“They only got it working again so they could figure out how to copy Towa’s technology.” The guard explains, “They weren’t even going to bother keeping it going, except someone from Division 14 kept insisting you all be allowed to come...”

That’s probably Naegi… dammit… if he’d known Future Foundation weren’t intending to keep the place running, he would have picked somewhere _else_ to bury Kiyotaka…

“But… but what about all the stuff that’s here?” Fujiko is asking worriedly, “Like the art, and the tools and what’s left of the students’ work, and the stocks of food!? Isn’t anyone keeping it safe… or even taking it somewhere else?”

“…We don’t have time to transport it all…” The guard says apologetically.

“So, even though this place is supposed to stand as a symbol of hope, and even with everything that has been lost because of that… Your organisation thinks it’s too much trouble to stop it from being overrun by despair?” Kenshiro asks disappointedly.

“Well…”

“Fuck that shit! I ain’t letting that happen!” Takemichi angrily cuts the guard off, “Even if I havta stay and beat the shit outta those Monokuma bots by _myself!”_

“…You’ll only be by yourself for a day.” Kenshiro tells him, before once again turning towards the medical room. “Once I’ve recovered I’ll help as well. Sakura gave her life for this place. I will as well. Now if you’ll excuse me...”

“Yeah… I’ll stay as well!” The other girl nods determinedly, “…I’m not _done_ with that piece of crap yet…”

“…Well, I guess it’ll be nice ta have a girl around ta cook and clea…” …Takemichi really _isn’t_ used to women, is he?

 _“I have a HACKING GUN,_ you little brat! And I’m _good_ with it, to! Haven’t you heard how Kanon Nakajima helped rescue one of Future Foundation’s most important members!? _”_ She snaps, waving what looks like a megaphone at him, before wincing at the pain in her arms… “But I guess you can borrow it until I can move my arms again…”

“I don’t need some dumb gun to beat those things!” Takemichi replies stubbornly, “Give it to Ishimaru, _he’s_ the one who can actually _use_ a gun!”

“Well, if he’s staying to, sure! But he hasn’t said anything yet!” Kanon rolls her eyes at him.

“Okay, fair enough, but him and I are sticking together with… Fujik- _ooohhh_ …” Takemichi hesitates and turns towards Fujiko, apparently only just realising _why_ Takaaki hasn’t declared that he’d be staying as well…

Fujiko is _clearly_ not a fighter, or even someone who deals well with dangerous situations. She looks uncomfortable enough merely being the centre of attention from all the people in the room…

“Umm… Well… There’s not really anything I can do about robots or anything like that…” She tells them all, apologetically, “But I’d still like to stay and sort out all the art and writing and everything that’s here, so if you’re all able to keep it safe, then I’ll try and help out where I can… I-if that’s alright…?”

Takemichi and Kanon look at each other briefly, then welcomingly shrug at her.

“In that case I suppose I’m staying here as well…” Takaaki is pleased to announce. This way he can look after Kiyotaka and what’s left of the school he loved so much… and perhaps they can even try to rebuild it a little while they’re here…

“So… you’re _all_ staying here? None of you need a lift back?” One of the guards asks, getting nods of confirmation in response…

“…Man, that pop star chick’s gonna be _pissed_ when she realises we coulda left hours ago like she asked…” The other mutters.

“Urrg, _gawd,_ no kidding…” The other holds his face in his hand, “And she’s been sat in the van all that time too…”

“…Pop star…?” Takaaki isn’t sure who they’re referring to.

“Oh! You mean Miss Ayaka?” Fujiko asks excitedly, “She was here because of Sayaka Maizono…”

“Ah… right, I saw her leaving the… _cold_ _room_ hours ago…” Takaaki remembers.

“Oh yeah, just before I came in, right?” Takemichi confirms it, “...She’s just been sat waiting to leave this whole time?”

They fall silent as they consider what her reasons for wanting to leave so quickly might be, until…

“Umm… Do you think we should let her know we’re all staying?” Fujiko asks, “I mean… I know she wants to leave, but given we’ve all had the same thing happen to us, maybe she’d like to stay with us, if she knew?”

For some reason, Fujiko, and now everyone else, turns to face Takaaki. As if it’s _his_ decision… or maybe perhaps _responsibility_ is a more accurate word. The number of ‘children’ he’s playing parent to seems to be rapidly increasing…

“…I’ll go and ask her.” Takaaki turns around towards the vehicles just outside the twisted school gates. Fujiko has a point. Even if the girl seems to have little love for the school, it’s only polite to let her know what they’ve decided to do…

It’s quite obvious which van the guards were referring to, as there is pop music coming from inside of it, and the girl he briefly saw earlier has her face pressed against the front passenger window and is peering out towards the school when Takaaki first makes his way out of the front door, although she quickly sits back up once she sees that Takaaki is heading towards her, meaning he still has to knock on the window to get her attention, even though she knows full well he’s there…

“Are you guys _finally_ done in there, now?” The window opens and she’s irritably asking questions before Takaaki even gets the chance to greet her, “If I’d know you were all going to be in there so long, I could have found a bikini and gone for a swim!”

…He’s honestly hoping this girl _won’t_ want to stay, not with _that_ sort of attitude… “…Most of us were thinking this was a chance to properly say goodbye to our loved ones… It’s not something that’s easily rushed.”

“W-well…” She stammers in the face of his annoyance, “Do you know if they’re almost done, or would I be better off going back inside for now?”

“Actually, we’ve all talked it over, and we’ve decided to stay and look after the school together.” Takaaki tells her, even though he suspects she has too little concern for anyone but herself to understand, “We thought we ought to let you know, in case you wanted to join us as well.”

“Huh… Well, I guess having a pool would be nice…” As Takaaki thought, she’s completely misunderstood their reasons, “But Future Foundation offered _me_ a _whole_ apartment all to myself, so I don’t need to be house-sharing with _you_ lot!”

The girl seems to be under the mistaken impression that being offered her own apartment is something unique, which perhaps it would be if it was some kind of fancy penthouse, but the chances are she’ll be given a tiny, boxy place like Takaaki has been living in for the past few months. “Future Foundation offered _all of_ us our own place…”

“Then why are you staying _here!?”_ She interrupts him incredulously,

“Because we want to keep the school safe, and Future Foundation aren’t intending to…” Takaaki explains, although she still looks bemused by their decision, “And… well, I suppose everyone else here has been through the same experience… being kidnapped for eighteen months and then finding out the person closest to us is dead…

 _“Oohh…_ I get it… you’ve all decided to stick together because none of you have anyone _else_ anymore, and you can’t stand the idea of being by yourselves…” She laughs dismissively, “And you’re inviting _me,_ because you think I’m probably in the same boat and will want to join in with your little ‘happy family’ thing.”

“…We thought it would be unfair if you were the only one excluded, just because you happened to be sat outside while we were discussing it.” Takakai can’t help but want to contradict her summary _somehow,_ just because of how _desperate_ she’s making his decisions seem…

“Well, thanks for the thought, but I was a _Pop Idol…_ I had to struggle all by myself to get where I was, and even _in_ the band I had to fight all the time, just to get my fair share of the spotlight!” She complains with pride in her voice, “Frankly, I’m looking forward to being a _solo_ act!”

…It’s amazing that she can talk about her old band with no sense of grief in her demeanour whatsoever. From the way she acts, you’d think she’d merely had a falling out with them all and they’re all moving on to solo careers for now, not that the world she knew is destroyed and her old bandmates are all _dead_ …

…Could it be that she’s still in denial? That she hasn’t been out of Towa City enough to realise what’s really happening out here? That she has no idea what it’s like waking up every morning in a tiny, empty apartment and opening the curtains to dark polluted skies day after day. Is she still following the same direction her old life had, not realising that all that has been stripped away and now the only goal left is to survive day after day, all the while wondering if it’s even _worth_ it anymore…?

He has a feeling he’ll end up regretting the words about to come out of his mouth, but, bad attitude or not, she _is_ in the same situation as the rest of them… “Well, you’re always welcome here if you change your mind.”

“Sure, I’ll keep it in mind.” She tells him before starting to wind the car window back up, clearly intending to forget the offer the second it closes… “Good luck with the new family, old man!”

…He _knows_ she’s being sarcastic. He _knows_ she thinks he’s a desperate fool who’s probably still in denial about how much of his life was bound up in Kiyotaka’s. He _knows_ she thinks trying to replace the son he raised for a decade and a half with a small group of young adults who are just as lonely and lost as he is is probably insane… _But…_

“Thank you.” …He can’t help but take the words at face value. Even if it _is_ dripping with sarcasm, hearing someone _else_ say that he has a family again is still giving him hope that perhaps he actually _does…_

…And so, it’s with this slightly more hopeful mood that Takaaki turns around and walks back through the twisted, broken gates towards the entrance to Hope’s Peak. And this time he can’t help but agree with Kiyotaka, that there really _is_ an air of possibility surrounding this old school…

 

**Epilogue:**

It takes a week after Future Foundation leaves for anything significant to happen.

Not that it’s been the easiest week of Takaaki’s life. It turns out that none of them are particularly good cooks, with Takaaki being the only one capable of consistently making edible food from scratch, even if he has to admit that said food is somewhat… _basic_ fare compared to what the kids are used to eating, especially Fujiko. Kenshiro requires more rest than anyone expected, but still keeps impeding his own recovery by refusing to admit it and insisting on going outside on patrols with Takemichi, who’s apparently too enamoured with the fighter to refuse. _That_ and various other minor behaviours of his seem to put him and Kanon at each other’s throats on a near constant basis, and there’s already concerns over how long the ammo for the hacking gun will hold out, even though they’ve hardly had any Monokuma bots attack them so far. And to top it all off, Takaaki is _certain_ that the _goddamn_ _cat_ views him as a rival for dominance over the ‘household’ and is secretly trying to kill him _,_ although the girls both thought he was joking the one time he said as much out loud…

But even with all the chaos and the stress, it’s still been better than being alone in the tiny apartment. They’ve been able to set up a schedule of chores, so he’ll no longer be waking up in the mornings with no clue as to what he’s supposed to be doing that day. The dining room might not be the most comfortable place to eat, but their ‘family’ meals together are still nicer than sitting on a sofa in front of a blank television. And while Fujiko’s attempts to catalogue the work in the art room are slow going, at least there’s a sense of progress as she’s beginning to steadily display them around the hallways of Hope’s Peak, whereas Takaaki doesn’t think he made a single change to the place Future Foundation gave him over the course of the months he spent there.

He didn’t realise how much he’d been stagnating by himself, until this fresh start had hit him full in the face. He’d been too content to just sit around and wait for Kiyotaka, or Future Foundation or someone _else_ to change everything for him… and he could imagine Kiyotaka scolding him for it from up in Heaven, telling him to get off his backside and do _something_ to change his situation, no matter how small it was, because ordinary people making small changes day by day would be what changed the world…

…And some of these walls are starting to look a bit faded… perhaps he could see if there was any paint in the storeroom and decorate the place? Plus, he’d _like_ to try and fix the front wall, but it’s unlikely that’s there’s anything like bricks or cement in there… They’re going to have to go and get supplies from somewhere outside of the school at _some_ point, if only because Kenshiro needs his medicine and the leftover tinned food won’t last forever, but the question is _how?_ The only vehicle they have is Takemichi’s motorcycle, and they won’t be able to get much on that… unless they can get a trailer for it, perhaps? He should try to ask Takemichi if that’s possible sometime today…

_*bing bong, ding dong…*_

Takaaki’s breath catches in his throat for a moment as the sound effect preceding ‘Monokuma’s’ announcements from the killing game rings across the room… but then he remembers that Kanon figured out how the control room worked and asked Kenshiro to take guard duty in there yesterday…

 _“There’s a van outside the front gate.”_ As he expected, Kenshiro’s voice soon follows the bell, _“It looks like Future Foundation, but I’m going to go and check…”_

…Which completely negates Kanon’s plan to _stop_ him from getting up and going outside… But Takaaki suspects that they’ll _all_ want to see why Future Foundation, if that’s really who it is, has come to check up on them… _He_ certainly does!

By the time he gets to the entranceway, Kanon and Takemichi are already there, peeking through the front door of the school, and Fujiko and Kenshiro are just catching up to him. Of course, the cat is nowhere to be seen…

…At least not until Takaaki’s foot catches on _something_ that then hisses at him as he’s sent stumbling forward and has to catch himself on the wall. Then the fat lump has the audacity to glare back at him, as if it was _his_ fault it purposefully walked _right in his damn path!_

…But never mind, they’ve got something more important to worry about right now.

“Can you see who it is in the van?” Takaaki asks the pair by the front door as he carries on walking as if nothing just happened.

“…Pretty sure it’s just that dweeby guy from Mondo’s class…” Takemichi replies.

 _“Makoto Naegi.”_ Kanon corrects him, patronisingly. “He’s one of the highest members of division 14!”

“Well, he’s still a dwee…”

 _“Let’s_ see what he wants, then!” Takaaki cuts off the beginnings of yet another argument and strides out through the main door, followed closely by the rest of the group, out to the front gates, where Makoto Naegi is standing awkwardly in front of his van…

He looks happy to see them all coming towards him, though, and waves cheerfully at them as they approach. “Hey! Great to see you guys are all okay! Have you been having much trouble?”

“…Not _too_ much… Although we have been targeted by a few stray Monokuma bots…”

“Yeah… we noticed that. Some of the division 2 guys have been monitoring this area to see if anyone’s noticed that Hope’s Peak has people in it again, but as you say, there’s not been anything yet…” Naegi summaries, “Which is actually partly why I’m here! The division heads have discussed it, and as you’re all guarding the school already, they’re willing to put _some_ resources into helping you do it! I’ve brought a couple more hacking guns and some ammo, more of Kenshiro’s medicine, some fresh foods and spices and also the latest news bulletins and some other reading materials Future Foundation have developed recently…”

Food, bullets and Kenshiro’s medicine? Well, that’s Takaaki’s major concerns out of the window, and if Future Foundation are intending to make regular supply trips, then there’s no need to worry about making supply trips for themselves… This is fantastic news!

“Kickass! Thanks, dude!”, “Great, we were already running low on ammo!”, “Ooh… some proper fruit would be _great!”_ The others seem to be in the same frame of mind as well…

“…And what’s the _other_ part of why you’re here?” Except Kenshiro, who picks up on Naegi’s throwaway comment instead.

“Oh, that? Well… There’s someone who’d like to join you guys, now…” Naegi announces, looking back toward the van. “And she said you’d already told her she could…?”

“You mean Ayaka?” That _was_ the only person he’d offered to let stay, and no one _else_ had been in contact with anyone here… “But, it’s only been a single _week_ …”

“Well it’s not _my_ fault Future Foundation are full of crap!” Ayaka’s voice cries out angrily from the front of the van, which Takaaki quickly realises has been slightly open the who time they were talking to Naegi, “I mean, they dumped me in this crappy little place with tiny rooms and a bunch of machines I don’t know how to use and just _left_ me there, by _myself!”_

The door to the van opens fully, revealing that Ayaka is looking much more disheveled than when she said goodbye to them all… She herself is perfectly clean, but her clothes look as if she’s been wearing them constantly all week without washing them, and her confident demeanour from before has been replaced with an angry mask of defiance, presumably to hide the shame of having had to come back here just because…

“You don’t know how to use a _washing_ _machine_ …?” Kanon observes.

“It’s not _my_ fault! My parents never bothered teaching me how to do laundry or cook, and once I was famous I had people to do all that crap _for_ me!” Ayaka snaps in response, “But now nobody _cares_ about that anymore! They wouldn’t even let me _try_ and sing or put on a show in exchange for doing stuff for me, because ‘the noise might attract attention from the Monokuma Bots or Remnants of Despair’! I mean, what sort of excuse is _that!?_ What’s the point in staying alive if they’re just going to cower in fear instead of doing anything _fun!?”_

So, she has no practical skills whatsoever, not to mention no patience or humility and an attitude that’s liable to cause even _more_ arguments in the school…

But she _has_ had the same experience as the rest of them, and a desire to work to make the world better again, even might not know the best way to _do_ that yet…

“Well… as I said before, you’re welcome to stay…” Takaaki told her, pleased that no one was openly contradicting him, _“But,_ you _are_ going to have to pull your weight, which means learning to do laundry and cleaning at the very _least_.”

“…I guess I’m not getting any better offers than _that.”_ She mutters, her eyes looking over the group stood behind him. “I can deal with it.”

…Why is she staring at _them_ when she says it? Is she intending to get someone _else_ to do her fair share of the work…? He’s getting the feeling he might have to keep an eye on her, especially around Fujiko, but it would be unfair to accuse her of it before she’s even tried living with them all… “In that case, welcome to Hope’s Peak… You can start by helping us unpack the supplies from Future Foundation.”

 _“Are you…!?”_ She begins to cry out in exasperation, then stops herself with a sigh as she looks over the expression of the rest of the group behind him. “Alright, fine… Pulling my weight!”

Takaaki _thinks_ she’s starting to mutter something about slave drivers under her breath as she turns back towards the van and looks at Naegi to open the back doors up…

“Well… that’s that sorted!” Naegi smiles, “But, now I’ve got a free seat, do any of you want to go back to Future Foundation…?”

That one sentence is all it takes for Takaaki’s blood to run cold as time seems to halt in its tracks… _They can’t leave! He only just got a family again!_

“…No one…?” Time and Takaaki’s breathing both resume their normal rhythm once it becomes clear that no one is agreeing to take Naegi’s offer, and he opens up the van. “Guess I’ve got a quiet drive home, then, hahaha!”

“…Are saying I talked too much on the way here!?” Ayaka snaps at him.

“N-no… I just meant I’m usually driving _with_ someone, so it’ll be odd!” He explains apologetically, although that doesn’t stop her from scowling suspiciously at him for the entire time the group of them spend unloading the van…

“Well, that’s everything then!” Naegi announces, as he gets back into the van. “Sorry I can’t stay to chat, but I’m on a schedule! You guys stay safe out here, alright?”

“And you look after yourself as well.” Takaaki reminds him, “Drive safely.”

“I will!” Naegi nods as he starts the van’s engine, before turning to face the window for one last wave goodbye... “Enjoy your new family, guys!”

…And then he’s shutting the window and driving away, before any of the ‘family’ can say anything back to him…

 _“…Family…?”_ Kenshiro repeats, sceptically.

“This’d be a pretty damn weird family…” Kanon agrees.

“Hey!” Takemichi takes offence at that, “It’s better than _nothing_ you prissy, stuck-up…”

 _“Takemichi_ …” Takaaki cuts him off warning, “She’s entitled to her opinion…”

“…And I didn’t say it _couldn’t_ be a family…” Kanon backtracks, “…Just that it’d be a _weird_ one.”

“Well… life’s pretty weird in general, now!” Fujiko points out, “So maybe it makes sense?”

“…I’d say it feels more like we’re creating a dojo together…” Kenshiro argues, “Thought those often become family affairs, from what I’ve heard…”

“Well, _whatever_ we are…” Ayaka looks around the group with an air of begrudging acceptance. “At least we have a pool! Right!?”

“Yep! And we’ve got a pet, to! Have you met Grand Bois Cheri…?” Fujiko excitedly picks up the fat lump and shows it to her new ‘sister’, “Ooh, he likes you!”

She’s not kidding, _this_ time the cat purrs and happily lets the girl he’s being introduced to scratch him under the chin and behind the ears… And thinking back on it, he had a similar reaction to _Kanon…_

…So, their ‘family’ consists of a womanising, fancy _hellcat,_ a motorcycling gangster, a manga artist who specialises in illustrating foods she can’t actually cook for herself, a baseball manager who seems to be better with her hacking gun than managing sportsmen, a former world’s strongest man who’s attempts not to be a burden are more of a burden than anything else, an ex-popstar who currently has no useful skills whatsoever…

…and a desperate old fool who’s hoping that being near all these crazy, energetic kids might _just_ make up for the loss of the most energetic kid he ever knew.

…Whether it’ll work or not, only time will tell. At least for now, this new ‘family’ of his has a need for him…

“Alright… now let’s get all these boxes unpacked and sorted out!”

…Even if it’s just as someone to groan at when he tries to corral them into doing chores.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> I have a few short stories based on this AU in mind, (most likely going to be written in a random order) but I'm thinking I'd put them all in a fic that's separate from this one (so a second fic in the same series) Unless anyone thinks it'd be better to put them alongside this fic?


	2. Pulling your weight (Ayaka POV)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seeing as only one person commented on it, I decided I will now add any short stories I write for this AU to this fic, to make it easier to find them all. This particular sotry follows almost straight on from the last one, but I can't guarantee they all will (or that there will be anymore at all. I've kind of started writing too many AUs...)
> 
> Also just a warning that I cried a lot while writing this, so it may contain Feels.

“…And _that’s_ how you load the washing machine! Now we just need to wait ninety minutes for it to run!” Ishimaru hoists himself off the ground, using the washing machine he’d just been loading for support, “Did you understand all of that?”

“Oh, totally! Just sort the clothes, put in the soap and conditioner, put the clothes in, shut the door, pick the cycle and set it going!” Ayaka smiles at him…

Of course, she hadn’t exactly been paying attention to _why or how_ he’d sorted the clothes, _which_ was the soap and which was the conditioner or _what_ cycle she was supposed to pick for each of the different piles he’d sorted. After all, she’s a _pop star_ , for crying out loud! There was no way she’s _actually_ going to do her own laundry _,_ let alone anyone _else’s!_

But this shabby ex-police officer has obviously got it in his head that, as the oldest person here, he’s now in charge of ‘looking after’ the rest of them, and having been an ordinary working-class-convinced-he-was-middle-class father, he thinks that includes making sure they all do regular _chores_. Like she’s some _normal_ child who needs to learn how to rely on herself, and _only_ herself… _Ha!_ As _if!_

“…So, you’ll be alright doing this for yourself next week?”

“Geez, I _just_ said as much! It’s not like it’s hard to remember!” Ayaka puts a scowl on her face…

…She has to give the old cop credit, he obviously didn’t expect her to just roll over and agree with him completely about become an in-school _maid_ , and _definitely_ doesn’t trust her when she says she’ll be fine doing all the work he has planned for her…

“Alright, then. You can always ask me if you need help.” …But it seems he isn’t one to push matters unless he has a good reason to. ‘Innocent unless proven guilty’ is something a cop would believe in, right? Either that, or his kid had been such a goody-two-shoes that he probably thought _all_ kids were lovely honest people… “Now, you’ll have to meet me back here when the cycle finishes and I’ll show you how to transfer the clothes into the tumble dryer…”

“Yes, _sir!”_ She pulls off a mock salute, “See you later!”

…If it had been anyone _else,_ she’d have tried to point out that that was a pretty obvious part of the procedure and _maaaaaybe_ he could have just done it for her _this time, pretty pleeeease…_ But Ishimaru seems to be one of the few guys his age whose head _wouldn’t_ be turned by a cute young starlet like herself acting flirty towards him. So for now she’ll just play along and pretend she’s paying proper attention while he tries to teach her how to do all these dumb chores...

 

It’s a week later… an incredibly annoying, mind-numbing week of listening to Ishimaru prattle on while he demonstrated how to do every stupid task from dusting a shelf to turning on a rice cooker, but it’s _finally_ a week later and she’s been left alone to do all the chores by herself…

And by ‘do chores by herself’ she means ‘wrap a guy around her little finger and get _him_ to do it _for_ her’. Just like so many guys have done in the past. And she knows _just_ the right guy for the job…

It doesn’t take her long to find him. If he’s not out patrolling the area for something to get into a fight with, he’s usually either in the sauna or taking advantage of the huge stash of food they have here. Right now, it’s the second option, as he’s sat in the dining room messily shoving huge spoonfuls of a mix of Yamada’s latest attempt at baking and that gross-looking, cheap custard from the school stores into his mouth. And also glaring at Nakajima’s look of disgust, as if daring her to say whatever thoughts she has about his crummy table manners out loud...

Takemichi Yukimaru… It’s _obvious_ he’s never touched a girl in his _life,_ although Ayaka’s sure that if she pressed him on it, he’d try to pretend he’s had _tons_ of girlfriends… He used to be the stand-in leader for the Crazy Diamonds, the country’s biggest group of young, macho, petrol-obsessed, muscle-heads. And if all the stuff Sayaka had told her about their _real_ leader was any indication, they were the sort of guys who all talked the talk about spending hours every night making out with ‘smoking hot chicks’, but secretly wished they could manage to get _any_ girl to so much as _look_ at them and gradually got increasing bitter and angry when they kept failing…

And it’s no _wonder_ they fail so much, given Yukimaru is obviously one of those guys who’s of the opinion that women should ‘like him for who he is’ instead of him having to shape himself up into something that’s at least _tolerable_ to them first. Heck, it’s been the underlying cause of about a _dozen_ different arguments between him and Nakajima this week alone, as the other girl has been trying to nag him into not making such a mess all the time…

Of course, _she_ obviously isn’t all that good with the opposite sex, either. If she _was,_ she’d have worked out that _nagging_ Yukimaru will either piss him off or make him do even _more_ annoying crap just for the negative attention from her. Whereas a little of Ayaka’s treasured stash of perfume, a few flirty smiles and looking _deep_ into his eyes will have him following her around like a _dog_ , if she wants him to…

_“Hey, Takemiiiichi…”_

“Ahm…!” She’s surprised he doesn’t choke on the mound of terrible dessert he quickly swallows as she comes over and helps herself to the chair in front of him, “Hey… umm… Han…eh… _err_ …”

“You can call me Ayaka!” She tells him, both because he’ll be more helpful if he thinks they’re close, and because that way she won’t have to listen to the idiot butcher her surname ever again…

“Thanks, Ayaka!” He’s already falling into her hands completely! Or at least, she _thinks_ so, until he turns to face Nakajima instead of her. “See, _she’s_ willing to make shit easy!”

“Nakajima is perfectly easy to say!” Nakajima snaps at him.

“The hell it is! Kanon’s _way_ easier!”

“I _told_ you, quit saying my name like that!”

“Why the hell not!?”

“Because it’s _rude_ and presumptuous, you…”

 _Wow…_ Seems like she’s accidentally restarted an argument they were already having. And while she sees Nakajima’s point, this is a _perfect_ opportunity to get Yukimaru to soften up to her…

“Aww, c’mon! Is it _really_ such a big deal?” Ayaka stops Nakajima from launching into a list of insults with an innocent sounding question, “I mean, we all went through the same thing, that puts us all closer together than most people, right?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to _tell_ her!” Yukimaru agrees. Of course, Ayaka _knew_ that when she said it. Of all of them here, Yukimaru’s the one who’s always the most insistent that they all be a close-knit ‘family’ unit…

Kanon doesn’t seem to have anything to say in response to that. Instead, she’s just scowling suspiciously at Ayaka, “…Didn’t think I’d even hear _you_ say that, Haneyama.”

“Well… I guess _Takemichi’s_ convinced me that this is going to work a lot better if we all pull together and help each other out, rather than irritating each other all the time!” Ayaka lies.

 _“Huh…”_ He looks pleasantly surprised by that, until he looks over at Nakajima snidely. “Well, it’s nice that _someone’s_ listening ta me!”

“Hmpth! I _listen_ to you, I just think you’re an idi…”

Oh for pity’s sake!

“Oh! But speaking of us helping each other out…” Ayaka has to cut off Nakajima again. After all, how is Ayaka supposed to enchant this idiot if he keeps getting into arguments with _her?_ “I just got done learning all the chores I’ve gotta do now, and some of them seem like they’ll take _ages_ for me to do… and I was _really_ hoping to start writing some new songs…”

“Man, that sucks for you…” Hmm! Yukimaru was behaving _just_ as she’d expected him to… “I’d offer ta swap, but most of my stuff’s fighting… well… except for looking after the garden, but I kinda wanna do that myself, sorry.”

... _Swap_ with her? _Woooow!_ He really _was_ oblivious about girls! “Well… Any chance you could just… help me out, a little…?” Ayaka asks, going as far as to flutter her eyelashes at him, seeing as he _apparently_ needs _really_ obvious hints.

“…Why should I?” ...Is he _really_ this oblivious? He doesn’t _look_ like he’s trying to play hard to get or anything like that… Maybe it’s time to ditch subtly altogether.

“Well…” Ayaka pulls out all the stops… hand on his forearm, sultry voice, promising smile, eye contact, everything! “I’d _really_ appreciate it…”

 _“…And?”_ Confusion covers Yukimaru’s face, as he prompts her to continue…

…Geez! What is she going to have to do, actually _say_ she’ll maybe have sex with him if he _does_ do it…? Well, it’s crass as hell, and there’s no way she actually _would,_ but…

 _*Bing bong. Ding dong*_ Eh? An announcement…? Does that mean this place os in trouble…?

 _“A Monokuma just showed up on the cameras.”_ It’s Kenshiro’s voice, as usual. _“I’m going to go deal with it.”_

…Well, _that_ was a pretty pointless announcement! Stupid muscle-head, scaring the crap out of her…

“Urg…” Nakajima seems overly annoyed by it though, “So he’s just going to wander off outside by himself!? Without telling us _where_ he’s going!? What he collapses or something and we don’t know where he is!?”

“Well… I’ll go an’ meet him at the front door and go out _with_ him, then! See ya!” Yukimaru suddenly yells, jumping up and leaving so fast he knocks his chair over and doesn’t bother to pick it back up, and without so much as a _glance_ in Ayaka’s direction as he leaves…

…What the hell just happened!? Has her perfume gone off or something!? He didn’t offer to do a damn _thing_ to help her, but he rushed off after the vaguely hot fighter guy the first chance he _got_ …

Wait… _hot_ …GUY _!?_

Oh _no…_ Don’t tell her…

“…He’s _gay,_ isn’t he…?”

“Well… it’d explain why he keeps helping Kenshiro sneak out when he’s _supposed_ to be resting!” Nakajima groused.

“You gotta be _kidding_ me!” Ayaka groans so hard she almost feels like crying… “I can’t live here if he’s _gay!”_

“…Are you _serious!?”_ Nakajima stares at her in disgusted disbelief.

“Yes! Who _else_ is gonna do my chores for me!?” Ayaka asks desperately. She can already tell Nakajima isn’t the sort…

“…You mean you’re only annoyed that he’s gay, because it means you can’t seduce him into doing laundry for you?” Nakajima asks.

“Well, _duh!_ Why _else_ would it annoy me? I’m not some homophobic dumbass!” Ayaka protests. Hell, most of her favourite costumes designers and choreographers had been blatantly gay…

“No… I guess you’re just a regular dumbass, then!” Nakajima laughs, “You really thought you’d be able to live here without doing _any_ work, even after Ishimaru _specifically_ told you were gonna need to pull your weight?”

“It’s not the first time I’ve been told that, and I managed to get away with it before!” Ayaka tells her.

“But _now_ you’ve not got any guys falling at your feet to help, right?” Nakajima grins smugly, “You can’t just rely on being _‘a hot chick’_ to get what you want from guys anymore!”

 _Uuurggghhh!_ She’s _right,_ but does she have to be so damn _smug_ about it!? It’s like she’s getting off on seeing how screwed Ayaka is! What the hell has she ever done to _her!?_

“Hahaha… And you’re stuck here until the first time Future Foundation come back with more supplies!” Nakajima laughs again at her predicament as she gets up to leave the dining room… “Well, you can’t sit there _all_ day. You’re on laundry duty, remember?”

So… Ayaka’s _really_ going to have to do housework now? But she hadn’t been listening to any of Ishimaru’s explanations! How is she supposed to do them _now!?_ Is she going to have to admit to Ishimaru that she hadn’t actually listened to anything he’d told her over the last week!? He’d be _so_ pissed off… What if he decides to send her to bed with no dinner or some other stupid punishment like that!? But it isn’t like she has any _other_ options! Ishimaru’s the one making her do the chores in the first place, she can’t expect _Kenshiro_ to do it with his heart condition, it’s painfully obvious Yukimaru and Nakajima aren’t going to help her out…

…But there _is_ still Yamada. And, okay, Yamada isn’t a _guy,_ but she seems like the sort of nice girl who gets picked on a lot and just wants someone to be friends with her… and will _totally_ be willing to do a few little chores for her new ‘BFF’, _right…?_

 

Ayaka finds her in the library, frowning morosely at a big, hardcover book. That’s pretty good timing, if Ayaka cheers her up, then she’ll all the more willing to help her out!

But… _how_ to cheer her up? Ayaka’s specialty has always been handling _guys…_ the whole concept of ‘girlfriends’ and sisterhood wasn’t something she’d ever really dealt with, before joining the band. And even then, it was usually _Sayaka_ who was the best at all of that stuff. She was the first to do dumb stuff like come up with cliché ‘getting to know each other’ games… except, somehow, with _her_ they actually _did_ have fun, end up laughing at each other’s stories, and get to know each other a little more. And it was _Sayaka_ who’d usually pick up if anyone was having a particularly bad day and encourage the rest of them to gather round and hug it out. And _Sayaka_ was the one who’d organise fun little things to do when touring got especially stressful, like watching a movie together and making a small amount of plain popcorn to go with it, and then somehow she’d make them all forget about the movie and end up throwing popcorn at each other like a group of little kids without a care in the world. Those nights were always fun…

… _Were_ always fun. There’s never going to be another night like that again, is there? The others are all dead… And Ayaka never thought to ask Sayaka how she made the popcorn. She never thought to pay attention to _any_ of the stuff Sayaka did. All those times Sayaka cheered them up, or even how she’d got them to get so close in the first place… Ayaka hadn’t been enough attention to any of it! She could have learnt so much from Sayaka, but it never occurred to her that she’d _need_ to learn any of it, because _Sayaka_ had it all covered! But now she’s gone… she’s gone and she’s not coming back, and now Ayaka’s never going to get the chance to learn any of that stuff again…

 _“…Miss Haneyama!?_ Are you _crying!?”_

“N- _no!”_ …Or she _shouldn’t_ be… She’s _supposed_ to be getting Yamada to do chores for her, not breathing shakily as stupid tears start prickling her eyes and gross snot is threatening to fall out of her nose… what the hell, Ayaka? Why is she suddenly getting like this _now!?_ She’s known _Sayaka’s dead_ for _ages_ now! Why the hell is she crying so hard that her legs collapse out from under her _now!?_

“… _Yes you are!”_ Dammit, she must look completely _ridiculous!_ Yamada’s even coming over for a closer look! “Umm… Here…?” Wait, what the hell is she _doing…!?_

…The answer to that become pretty clear, when Ayaka suddenly feels her body being squished between a soft chest and flabby arms, and then pudgy hands start rubbing her back soothingly… Yamada is giving her a _hug!? Geez,_ Ayaka! Get it together! She was supposed to come in here and wrap her around her little finger! This isn’t going to help with that! This is _pathetic!_ This is… this is…

…This is something _Sayaka_ always used to do when people cried…

_Oh Goddamnit! Why the hell did she think THAT!?_

_“Aaahhhgggghhhh!”_ Now she can’t _stop_ and there’s nothing she can do, except bury her head into Yamada’s shoulder so she doesn’t look _quite_ as gross and messy while memories of _Sayaka_ and the _band_ and _getting to perform to thousands of cheering fans_ and all the _other_ things she’s not going to be able to experience ever again overflow her mind and spill out of her uncontrollably, making her whole body shudder in Yamada’s arms for some _stupidly_ long amount of time before she’s able to think properly and breathe normally and finally calm down…

“…Are you feeling better, now?” Yamada asks her, timidly.

“…Yeah.” As she pulls herself out of Yamada’s grasp, Ayaka has to admit, she _is_ feeling better. “…Thanks for that.”

“Your welcome!” Yamada seems pleased at getting thanked, she really _is_ desperate for friends… “Umm… Do you cry like that a lot…?”

…Usually a question like that would annoy Ayaka… but Yamada only seems to be asking because she’s _actually_ worried about Ayaka.

“No… I… I was just…” Ayaka looks away from the other girl as she tries to think how to word this… “…Thinking about how I need to do something _Sayaka_ used to be good at, and then it suddenly hit me that I’ll never be able to learn how _she_ did it…”

…There’s a moment of silence, before Yamada suddenly sniffs... and then breaths in shakily… and Ayaka turns to see that the girl is covering her mouth and holding her breath in an attempt to hold back tears…

“It… It’s not _that_ sad! You’ve not got to _pity-cry!”_ Ayaka can’t help snapping at her…

“N-no… it’s not that…” Yamada’s crying only gets more heavier… “I… I just… I _miss_ my _… my Mom’s baking! Ahhhh_ …”

Ayaka watches as Yamada manages to take in one last deep breath, before her body hunches forwards and she dissolves into sobs…

…Dammit… It hadn’t occurred to Ayaka that she might not be the only person going through crap like that… let alone that bringing it up might make Yamada cry like _that_ … And she couldn’t just sit here and wait for it to stop without at least _trying_ to help…

“…Sorry.” This time it’s Ayaka putting her arms around Yamada’s shoulders, and trying to pat her back.

“ _Ahh…_ It’s not _your_ fault!” Yamada manages to say between sobs, “It’s just… I was trying to read some recipes, but they keep using words I don’t know, and I was thinking I should have asked M-mom… but…”

 _Eeerggg…_ Now Yamada’s burying her face in Ayaka’s blouse… and she can already feel how damp it’s getting from the tears… but it’s not like she’s got any right to moan about it when this is _her_ fault and she was doing the same thing less than five minutes ago… So Ayaka just sits and waits it out, patting her back like that’ll do a damn thing to help her…

Eventually, Yamada’s tears dry up and she slowly sits back up straight, wiping her face on her sleeve. “Ahh… S-sorry about that…” She mutters, looking downwards at Ayaka’s chest guiltily, “I’ve made a complete mess of your clothes…”

She _has,_ but… “I did the same to yours…”

“Yes… but I can’t even help you clean it up!” She tells Ayaka, guiltily…

But… _why not?_ Wasn’t she the one who’d been doing most of the cleaning before Ayaka came back…?

“Oh!” Yamada seems to have noticed her look of confusion, “Mr. Ishimaru told me that if I help you with your chores, he’ll only let Grand Bois Cheri eat _normal_ cat food…”

… _CRAP!_ That goddamn smug old _asshole!_ He’d known this whole _week_ that Ayaka wasn’t paying attention to him, hadn’t he!? But instead of _saying_ so, he’d just quietly gone and made _absolutely_ _sure_ she was in a position where she _had_ to go back to him and ask for help all over again! _AARRGGGHHH!_

Well, that’s it, isn’t it? There isn’t anyone here who’ll help her, now! Ishimaru has _won._ Seems that getting someone _else_ to do demeaning chores _for_ her is now just yet another thing she isn’t going to get to experience anymore…

“Well… It’s not like washing two extra blouses will make a big difference, is it!?” Ayaka forces herself to remain outwardly calm. She’s _not_ going to give that old cop the satisfaction of knowing he’s _pissed her off_ with his jerkish move. “But, speaking of that, I guess I better get on with the laundry soon…”

“Alright then…” Yamada sighs, disappointedly, “I’ll… see if I can understand _any_ of these recipes…”

…She doesn’t sound too hopeful. And the book she’s reading looks pretty complicated… “Wouldn’t you be better off starting with an easier book? Like, if there’s a ‘cooking for dummies’ or something…?”

“Oh… there were books like that! But they’re too high up for me to reach, and I get dizzy on ladders…” Yamada admits.

…The hell? She’s been miserable because of _that!?_ But it’s so easy! “Well… show me where they are and I’ll get them down for you.”

 _“Really!?”_ Yamada’s face lights up in surprise, “Umm… some of them are _really_ high but, though… but…”

She shows Ayaka the area for the first one, which _really_ isn’t all that high. It only takes her a minute to climb up, spot the exact book Yamada wants and then bring it back down…

 _“…Wow!_ You’re really good at climbing!” The girl gasps as Ayaka nimbly hops off the last few step of the ladder.

“I guess…? I had to climb a lot a lot of ladders during some of our shows…” Ayaka remembers.

“Really?”

“Yeah… we’d have these giant, high up set pieces that we had to climb to…” Ayaka explains, “…And then sometimes they’d expect us to make a costume change during the interval, so we’d have about fifteen minutes to climb down, change, get a drink, fix make-up and then get ourselves back up there…”

“You must be pretty fit!” Yamada exclaims, “I mean… not that you don’t _look_ healthy or anything, but there’s no way _I’d_ be able to do something like that…”

“Well, I had to spend a lot of time practising and working out, so I’d be fit enough…” Ayaka admitted, “Where’s the next book?”

“Oh… it’s over here…” Yamada starts to guide her to the next one, “…Maybe I’d have been better off if I’d done something like that, instead of drawing all the time…”

“But I thought you were good at drawing…?”

“Well… I _am,_ but art’s not really much help _now,_ is it…?”

“Maybe not… and my music’s not much help either…” As much as Ayaka hates to admitted it, it can’t really _help_ their situation or the crappy way the world has turned out, “But once all this ‘despair’ bullshit gets dealt with, they’ll want it all again!”

“I guess you’re right.” Yamada smiles, “I suppose we’ll just have to learn to pull our weight in other ways, in the meantime!”

“…Yeah, you’re right.” Dammit. She really is… and that old man is going to be so smug about it once Ayaka says as much to him, she just _knows_ it...

A little while later, Yamada has a pile of much simpler looking cook books to look through, and a big smile on her face… “Thank you so much, Miss Haneyama!”

Urg… this formality is weird… She’s always been used to here fans calling her by name, or Ayakasu… And this is someone whose blouse she was sobbing into half an hour ago… “You can call me Ayaka, if you like…”

“R… _really!?”_ Yamada’s cheeks are starting to turn pink.

“Sure!” Hell, if she’s letting that dumb _biker_ call her by her first name…

 _“Heee…!”_ She giggles way too excitedly over something so little… “S…sorry! It’s just, I’ve never been on first-name basis with someone outside of my family before coming here… And you’re the first _girl…”_

…Just like Ayaka had thought, she’s never really had friends, even though she’s slightly older than Ayaka…

…But, right now, Ayaka has just as many friends as Yamada does…

“Well, get used to it, _Fujiko!”_ Ayaka orders her. “’Cause we’re gonna be sticking together, now!”

Fujiko stares at Ayaka for a moment, body trembling and smile widening in excitement, before she suddenly rushes forward for a tight hug… “Thank you!”

“No problem…” Ayaka can’t help hugging her back for a little bit... She forgot how nice it was to make people _smile_. “But, seriously, I gotta go do laundry, or Ishimaru’s probably going to make _me_ eat cat food!”

“Ahahahaha!” Fujiko laughs, although Ayaka was actually being serious… “Alright, I’ll let you get going now… See you at dinner!”

“See you!” Ayaka turns and walks out of the library, feeling much better than she has for a _long_ time…

…At least until she turns out of the door and sees Ishimaru stood waiting for her. Aww, _crap!_ Guess he got bored of waiting for her to come and beg for help, or maybe he thought Fujiko would be trying to secretly help here and came to make sure that wasn’t happening… 

But… he doesn’t look _that_ pissed off with her… it’s almost like he’s actually slightly… _mollified_ now, which doesn’t really make much sense… unless he heard her agreeing that she’ll need to find a new way to help out…

“…How long have you been _out_ here?”

“Long enough to see you helping Fujiko.” He doesn’t really answer her question, “And _enjoying_ being helpful.”

“Well, _yeah!_ I wouldn’t have busted my ass to get famous if I didn’t like making people happy!” Ayaka points out bluntly, “I just prefer to do it with music, not _chores.”_

“Well, _I_ prefer to use _rewards_ to get Kiy… _kids…_ to do chores, rather than _threats!”_ The stern, irritated look he’s giving her would probably have been more effective if she hadn’t just seen the flash of pain in his eyes as he’d thought about his son, “…But sometimes you have to learn to do things you don’t really want to… especially in a time like _this.”_

“Alright… I’m sorry I didn’t really listen when you were trying to teach me before...” He’s not in the least bit surprised at Ayaka’s admission _or_ apology, “Could you show me again…? Please?” She adds the final word after he glares at her.

“Alright… but _this_ time, you’d better pay attention!” His eyes darken, making them look like there’s shadows of fire in them, “Or _cat food_ will be the _least_ of your worries…”

 _Geez!_ He’s… he’s just _joking_ right? He… he wouldn’t _really_ do anything… _really_ bad to her, would he?

…Then again, right now, he looks crazy enough to… Maybe it’s for the best if she _doesn’t_ find out…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


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